


Safe as anywhere

by queerly_it_is



Category: Borderlands, Tales from the Borderlands - Fandom
Genre: AU (still borderlands setting), Awkwardness, College, Explicit Sexual Content, Families of Choice, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Nerds being bad at feelings, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:04:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5392013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerly_it_is/pseuds/queerly_it_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vaughn went through his entire first year and a half of college without going to places like this, except for maybe two or three incredibly awkward attempts to socialise in the first few weeks. He’s been just fine without trying it again since, thanks, but now here he is, for the second night this week, after the two times last week. After whole semesters of literally never leaving the campus. And why?</p>
<p>A bright cry of, “You’re here!” flies out from behind the bar once he finally, minus a few compound fractures, reaches the front of the tidal wave of people. The words hit him a split-second before Rhys’ neon grin, and Rhys’ floppy hair, and Rhys’ shirt with the sleeve cut off around his cybernetic arm and the collar stretched down enough to show the beginnings of the tattoos on his chest, the whole handkerchief’s worth of fabric generally clinging obscenely to his body.</p>
<p>Right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe as anywhere

The thing is, Vaughn doesn’t even _like_ bars.

Honestly, there’s not a whole lot to love about being crushed in a dark, noisy space, squeezing through a crowd of other college students who almost all tower over him while they slosh their drinks, attempting to dance and/or grind up on each other, never noticing that yes, there is someone trying to get to the bar and yes, that _was_ his foot, but no no don’t apologise, he probably doesn’t need allthose small bones anyway.

Shouldering past two guys literally pouring beer into each other’s mouths, Vaughn thinks of every metaphor he’s ever read for some lit requirement about journeying through the underworld. It’s like walking through a forest where the trees have declared ‘hey, let’s fuck with the little guy in the nerdy clothes!’. It’s high school with a liquor license, basically.

Vaughn went through his entire first year and a half of college without going to places like this, except for maybe two or three incredibly awkward attempts to socialise in the first few weeks. He’s been just fine without trying it again since, thanks, but now here he is, for the second night this week, after the two times last week. After whole semesters of literally never leaving the campus. And why?

A bright cry of, “You’re here!” flies out from behind the bar once he finally, minus a few compound fractures, reaches the front of the tidal wave of people. The words hit him a split-second before Rhys’ neon grin, and Rhys’ floppy hair, and Rhys’ shirt with the sleeve cut off around his cybernetic arm and the collar stretched down enough to show the beginnings of the tattoos on his chest, the whole handkerchief’s worth of fabric generally clinging obscenely to his body.

“Ha, yeah, I’m here,” he says, smiling back, feeling warmer than the entire battle through the horde left him, because _seriously_. The wince he makes when the oblivious person passing behind him shoves him bodily against the edge of the counter probably erases whatever stupid expression was there before, at least.

“Awesome!” Rhys says, shimmying his hips as he moves around, still beaming like he’s hooked up to the power grid.

Now there’s an idea. Shock therapy.

“Hey guys, Vaughn’s here!” Rhys yells over the music like it’s the most exciting thing to happen all night, craning around, swinging his smile like a lighthouse beam. Vaughn sucks in a breath while his attention is aimed elsewhere, the bass banging up through his feet into the space behind his ribs as he tries to remember the last time anyone sounded that pleased to see him.

“Great,” August sighs, popping up from further down the bar, knocking tops off bottles and handing them over. “Is he gonna help us serve the eight million people waiting for you to get ‘em drinks? ‘Cause if not...”

“Play nice, August,” Sasha says lightly, slicing her way through the crowd, tray held up high, exuding effortless murder as she winks at Vaughn. August makes a half-apologetic kind of wince in his direction, which Vaughn has come to realise is both a lot of effort for him and probably seventy-five percent of his expressive range. It’s comforting, that underwhelmed reaction. It makes him more confident there aren’t hidden cameras poised to spring out at him, and that he hasn’t woken up in someone else’s body, in some parallel reality.

Rhys sticks his tongue out at August’s back, which does nothing for any of Vaughn’s current problems. “Ignore him, okay? Everybody does. I’m super glad you decided to come,” he says, smiling at Vaughn as he pours and slides glasses down the bar, leaning on the counter to get close enough to hear someone else’s shouted order. It’s like watching moths go happily right into a candle.

In a sadly resigned corner of his head, Vaughn admits his reason for coming here is probably the same as all the other people who give Rhys their order with a smile or a flick of their hair, a cocked hip or a glance through their eyelashes. He could probably work out the exact percentage. That corner is pretty expansive right now. It’s a load-bearing corner. He could add a breakfast nook.

But this is Rhys’ _thing_ , he reminds himself, sternly as he can. Flirting with anything that moves, dancing around with no detectable centre of gravity, always kind of off the rhythm of whatever the speakers are trying to bellow over the heaving sea of bodies, like there’s some other music playing that only he can hear.

He watches Rhys flip a bottle quickly in his cybernetic hand, catch it, winking at whoever cheers him on, shaking his ass in his unreasonably tight jeans. The fact that Vaughn’s seen him drop bottles more than once, slip dramatically on spillages behind the bar, and blush a vivid pink when people actually reach out and touch him doesn’t make him feel any better about this...this _whatever_ it is that’s dragged him here, in the least-wrinkled, closest approximation to a ‘yes, I am someone who goes to bars’-looking shirt he owns.

He is, if nothing else, honest about his high placement in the roster of the Pathetic Olympics.

“What can I get you?” Rhys asks, trying for sultry, blue glow of his ECHO eye centred on Vaughn, and Vaughn bites back the _What, is this a porno now?_ and forces himself not to shrug, not to pull at his collar like a cartoon character with steam jetting off of him.

“I don’t—you pick. Surprise me,” he says, which really doesn’t take them off the porno dialogue track _at all_. He can feel his search engine history judging him pre-emptively.

“Probably not a good idea,” says someone as they slip around him and behind the bar. Fiona. “The last time Rhys tried to invent a drink it didn’t go so well.”

“Hey,” Rhys says, “it worked great! The guy got drunk, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Fiona says, in a patient-but-not-for-long kind of voice. “And then he blacked out. And hit his head. And threatened to sue us.”

“He was fine,” Rhys confides to Vaughn as soon as Fiona walks away again to deal with a more urgent catastrophe or get a drink or shoot someone. “You know how many times I’ve hit my head on this bar?” He taps the stained surface affectionately.

“Uh,” Vaughn says, but Rhys is already mixing things. Things with contrasting colours. Things with what he thinks are many serious warnings on the labels. Then he puts a cherry and a little umbrella in it.

“Oh hey, how did your presentation thing go?” Rhys asks, shooting him a look through his lashes, a loose smile on his mouth as he pushes the glass to him.

And this is Rhys’ _other_ thing. He actually listens. He remembers. He – and here’s where Vaughn shoots into gold medal, front runner for Pathetic Champion territory – makes Vaughn feel like he _cares_ , because Vaughn is great with numbers and is possibly a financial genius, but he’s also a giant fucking idiot.

He sighs, picks up the glass, and wonders briefly even if he was completely, totally sure it was deadly poison, would that stop him from drinking it while Rhys is looking at him like that, bottom lip caught hopefully between his teeth, elbows on the bar, hair falling in his face, shadows and ink picking out his exposed collarbones?

The drink burns on its way down, right to the centre of his chest like a lit fuse. While he waits for his throat to stop searing, and since he hasn’t actually gone blind, he pushes his glasses up his nose and tries to _think_.

“So?” Rhys prompts.

“Not bad,” he finally says, suppressing a cough, and Rhys lights up all over again, reaches out and claps him on the shoulder. Then he steals the cherry from Vaughn’s glass and pops it into his mouth.

No, Vaughn decides, deadly poison wouldn’t have stopped him.

“The presentation, dude! Tell me everything! Did you ace it? I bet you aced it.”

Vaughn blinks, stuck between smiling and trying to impale himself on the tiny umbrella stick as a means of escape. “I—Yeah I did okay. I mean. Perfect grade.” He winces a little. People don’t _like_ the dude with the perfect grade. People shove the dude with the perfect grade into lockers in high school and then in college they get him to do all the work for the whole group and ‘forget’ to invite him out to bars with the rest of them to celebrate.

Rhys drums his hands down on the bar, then on Vaughn’s shoulders, making him sway a little. “That’s so great, bro! I knew you would. You’re like, amazing.” He holds onto Vaughn’s shoulders for a second before he lets go. He’s still really, really close.

That drink seriously made it hard to swallow, or breathe, Vaughn thinks.

“Rhys!” Fiona yells from somewhere, possibly his conscience. “Customers! Customers who aren’t your friends!”

“Right, sorry!” Rhys yells back, trampling right over Vaughn’s half-constructed _We’re not really friends_ , but whatever. Rhys is probably ‘friends’ with everyone he meets like this, repeat appearances or not, he tells himself. It’s just the kind of person he is. Iron filing, meet magnet. Tiny planet, fall into sun.

He lets Rhys pour him another of the probably not life-threatening drinks, and then another, offers Rhys the cherry and can’t not laugh when Rhys makes a show of accepting it, clutching it to his chest and everything.

“I’m naming the drink after you,” he says firmly.

“You might wanna wait until you’re sure it won’t kill me before you trademark it, unless you mean as like, a memorial, which honestly seems kind of cruel after it killed me and everything” Vaughn says, and Rhys laughs, hand on his belly.

“I would never! I promise to throw myself between you and any murderous drinks that come near you,” he says, moving around to keep serving while never quite leaving Vaughn’s little entrenched position, still dancing, even, in that hypnotising and endearingly clumsy way.

“No throwing yourself or anything else,” Fiona says sharply, appearing and disappearing.

“How does she do that?” Vaughn asks, laughing, turning his empty glass between his fingers. He feels sweat sliding down his back, heat in his face, the constant buzz of the music working away just under his skin, and again and again, looks from Rhys like jolts up his spine, all along his nerves. He’s terrified, no less than every time he’s been back here, and he’s starting to worry it’s addictive.

“I’m too scared to ask,” Rhys shrugs, flash of collarbones, rub of his fingers over the tattoo on his neck that Vaughn has not once imagined with a hickey laid over it.

“I should probably head out,” he says, awkwardness coming down on him like a deadfall of branches, made worse by the alcohol-fuelled lurch his stomach gives at Rhys’ frown. “I have a paper I need to write. And classes. And notes to—y’know. Note.” He grimaces. It’s all true, and it’s all important. It’s his entire life, pretty much, discounting the gym and the occasional chance to sleep. Except now it’s not, because he keeps coming here and doing this. And he doesn’t _want_ to leave, which is scary all by itself.

“Aw, man, you sure you have to go? Don’t wanna stay, keep me company?” Rhys is _pouting_ now.

People must go bankrupt in this place, Vaughn thinks. Grandkids are gonna be paying off tabs long after Rhys is an old man with his student loans paid off multiple times over in tips.

He can’t stay. He absolutely should not stay. He’s dug a pretty deep hole for himself already, deep enough he shouldn’t even be able to see Rhys’ pleading look. Never mind that he’s not convinced he can get out of here through the sloppy and worshipful congregation now, not without some kind of weapon and a set of stilts.

“My shift’s over in an hour,” Rhys needles him. “Less than an hour. I’ll walk you out.” He waggles his eyebrows. “I know, like, a thousand amazing jokes that _have_ to be enjoyed while you’re drunk to be truly appreciated.”

“That’s really the only way you’ll appreciate them,” Sasha says, shoving Rhys to the side to get at the fridge.

“If you don’t let me show you out,” Rhys says, “I’ll have to stay, and clean, and mop the bathrooms, and carry heavy things.” He widens his eyes and puts on a look like _please don’t sew me up in the sack and throw me in the river._

Vaughn resists the urge to knock his head against the counter, local tradition or not. He tries not to see the way August is pretending to put a gun to his own head, miming a splatter against the wall before Sasha hits him in the side with her tray and he doubles over, looking weirdly pleased about the whole thing.

“One more,” he says, pushing the glass at Rhys. He can nurse it. It’ll be good practice for the hangover.

“I’ll get you some peanuts,” Rhys says, grinning, bouncing on his feet, and Vaughn is truly disgusted with how all-over warm that makes him feel, but what the hell. You don’t get this far in the Pathetic Olympics without serious commitment.

By the time Rhys gets back with peanuts, chips, and pretzels, August has moved on to miming himself a noose. Rhys doesn’t stop dancing, and his eyes keep finding Vaughn for no reason at all, quick flashes in the dimness.

-|-

“There we go,” Rhys says once they make it outside, like breaking through the surface of a boiling lake, open air suddenly cooling Vaughn’s skin. He unbuttons his shirt and the air wraps chill fingers around his ribs. Rhys has a nice voice, Vaughn thinks as he hears Rhys say, “I uh, I should probably have cut you off, huh? Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Vaughn says because Rhys should never sound sad like that, and leaning on Rhys because he’s warm and the air isn’t. He’s also very tall. “You’re very tall.”

“Thanks,” Rhys says, huffing, smiling down at Vaughn. “You’re uh, a lot more built than you look? Uh.”

“Stilts,” Vaughn says solemnly, squinting up at Rhys’ face, which is very far away, like looking down the wrong end of a telescope. “Y’see? I knew it.”

“Exactly,” Rhys nods agreeably, patting him on the back and then stopping when Vaughn’s face does something that probably involves a shade of olive, possibly lime.

“Where’re we going anyway?” he asks, once he stops wanting to throw up. He kind of wants a taco. He’s at least interested in the concept of a taco.

“Well, you’re gonna have to tell me,” Rhys says. “I don’t know which dorm you’re in.”

“The small one,” Vaughn says, and points, he thinks with conviction.

“Right,” Rhys says, laughing a little, a nice little sound. He wraps a hand around Vaughn’s arm, a flashlight beam splaying out from his other palm. “Let’s go. I bet we can find it. I can tell you jokes on the way.”

-|-

Vaughn’s alarm, being an industrious little go-getter, visits a hardware store, buys a power drill, then sneaks into his bed and puts it to his temple.

He groans, flails until the drilling stops, falls onto the floor, and goes back to sleep, because when you can’t find the strength to open your eyes, willing yourself into a coma is just too much pressure.

He stumbles into the bathroom some time after that, puts his head under the faucet, and tries to count how many brain cells he has left. He’s an accountant, or he will be. Numbers are important.

Looking at himself in the mirror, hair everywhere, eyes red, stubble on his cheeks, and his skull replaced with one at least two sizes too small, he thinks, _This is karma_ , and then uses up half a tube of toothpaste trying to make his mouth taste like literally anything else.

Shuffling around his dorm room, which is only big enough to allow three or four good shuffles to begin with, he kicks the shirt he wore last night over to his laundry pile, picks up a taco wrapper, half a taco still in it, with a confused frown, decides the questions just aren’t worth it and throws it in the vicinity of the trashcan. He turns to his desk against the wall opposite his bed with the notes and the paper he was planning to finish today, getting expectant looks from columns of figures and flat stares from everything he’s underlined as a major point. Then he glances back at the sweat-damp shirt that he thinks even from across his postage stamp of a floor smells noxiously of booze and bar, assuming it’s not coming from his pores, and smiles, even if it makes the headache worse.

“Idiot,” he says to himself, to the past Vaughn who wore that shirt expecting... what? Less than he got? More? He sighs, scrubs a hand through his hair and calls himself an idiot again. He’s sure he’s imagining the faint smell of an aftershave that isn’t his.

He doesn’t sound very convincing. Past Vaughn just doesn’t want to apologise, because he isn’t actually sorry, the dick.

There’s a post-it stuck to his wall by the door.

_Vaughn the brawn! (and brains!)! Drink water!!_ it tells him in a loose, sloping hand. There’s a number written underneath it, followed by Rhys’ name in more parentheses, as if Vaughn gets deposited into his dorm room half unconscious by a lot of people, and might need the specificity. He stares at it, the little yellow fact of it like a bruise he doesn’t remember getting, the way Rhys apparently loops the _R_ in his name, the excessive use of exclamation points.

Someone should tell Rhys not to give his number out to every lightweight he has to drag out of the bar, Vaughn thinks. He tries to decide whether to drop the post-it in the trash or just leave it there, then takes it off the wall and sticks it to a blank notebook page on his desk, right next to the pen Rhys must have used, bright blue, like his eye implant.

“Hnh,” he says, before giving up and heading for the shower, where he can be efficient by getting clean while also sitting down, if he does it diagonally across the floor and bends his knees a little.

He avoids thinking about how Rhys would never be able to do that, with legs that long, a body that long, or about how they could get around that by just leaning against each other under the spray, holding each other up, turning to push each other against the tiles, or about how you can learn to ignore water slipping into your open mouth.

He sits there a long time, eyes closed and breathing steam, not thinking about it.

-|-

When he pushes through the door into the library, squinting against the fluorescents and thinking dreamily of aspirin, it is – because again, karma – already packed full.

Usually Vaughn avoids this by getting here early, by staking out a table before the hordes of zombie-like, hung-over people shamble in, and by not going to bars and getting drunk hanging around attractive bartenders who smile like you’re somehow making their day, just by being there.

“Shit,” he mutters, looking around at the complete lack of tables, outlets, or computers that aren’t being orbited by two or three or four wilting people dressed in hoodies and slouches, deadlines like clouds of locusts hovering overhead. One guy, possibly asleep standing up, has impressive bed-head and seriously mismatched sneakers on. A girl at a computer across from him is typing with one eye clamped shut. Between two shelves of books, out of sight of the staff desk, a guy pulls a small carton of milk from his backpack, then a small box of cereal, then a plastic spoon.

Here they all are, Vaughn thinks. Potential victims of Rhys. A support group just waiting to happen.

He sighs, makes his way between the stacks and starts pulling down reference material he’s going to need, wishing he’d brought a bigger bag if he’s going to have to haul this stuff back to his room. At least the time he’s spent in the gym instead of socialising won’t go totally to waste.

With his arms full of books and the stuff he was already carrying when he walked in, he doesn’t see mismatched sneaker guy until he’s already thumped right into him. Books fall, loudly, and Vaughn considers how you never really notice the ambient noise in a library until it suddenly stops.

“Oh man, I’m so sorry,” he says to the really not at all alike sneakers, which might actually be two _left_ sneakers, he thinks as he stoops to pick up his stuff, giving up on a pen that rolls away from him defiantly, spotting its chance for a free life under a table. “I honestly didn’t see—oh. Hey.”

“Hey back,” Rhys says, smiling, like they do this all the time. Like he’s not wearing two completely different shoes. Two left shoes. Like his hair isn’t all cowlicks. Like a lot of Vaughn’s insides haven’t come loose in transit and started wheeling in opposing directions. There are pillow creases on Rhys’ face. Vaughn wants to dissolve, just disappear right into his socks, retract like a prodded snail.

“You okay?” Rhys asks, and puts a steadying arm on Vaughn’s bicep, looking at him like he’s trying to mentally rearrange Vaughn into a shape that makes more sense, which would only be fair.

“I didn’t recognise you,” Vaughn says. “Without, y’know. The whole bar around you.” Lights, music, adoring fans.

Rhys smiles. “Now you know my civilian identity, I guess.”

“Your civilian identity wears two left shoes?” Vaughn asks. It just kind of happens, like he’s just standing there and boom, fumble, crash and burn.

Rhys blushes, ears going pink, neck flushing right down to his collar. “I, uh, I might have lost the right one? Both pairs, actually. It was—yeah. Not my best day.”

Vaughn blinks, still trying to deal with the blushing, in combination with the fluffed-up hair, the old, soft blue sweater with the hole in the shoulder, any of it, separately or together. Sweaty, flirting, dancing Rhys was one thing. This is some kind of overly-laundered cotton warfare.

“Wow,” he says, relieved when he rewinds and decides it works as a response to the whole shoe situation.

“Yeah,” Rhys says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Anyway, I’m sorry I knocked you over. I was—I was gonna come and talk to you, y’know. Say hi.”

“Oh,” Vaughn says, trying to fit that somewhere into his worldview, all square peg and round hole, and then it clicks, “Oh, hey, I didn’t pay for any of those drinks last night, did I? I don’t remember paying. You should’ve said something.”

Rhys laughs, too loud for a library, and Vaughn really wants to ask him to do it again. “Dude, don’t worry about it. You let me like, experiment on you.”

Vaughn’s eyebrows go up, all by themselves. Rhys’ flush gets a fresh coating.

“With the drinks,” Rhys adds, an epoch or so too late, but Vaughn nods.

“Right,” he says, swallowing. “I probably shouldn’t have had more than one of those things.”

Rhys winces in sympathy, makes some kind of move to touch him, then stops. Vaughn can’t decide if he’s relieved or disappointed. “Sorry,” Rhys says, “I think I might have made them a little too strong.” He quirks his mouth. “The Vodka Vaughn is more powerful than it looks.”

“Okay,” Vaughn says, rallying, “well, first of all, you’re not calling it that. Second, I think it was how many of them I had. One on its own probably doesn’t need a health warning.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Rhys says slowly, shrugging a shoulder, a faint mechanical whirr, giving him a lopsided smile. “One’s probably plenty dangerous all by itself.”

Vaughn really doesn’t have the capacity to deal with Rhys switching on the whole flirty, overly-friendly bartender persona right now, like some kind of social reflex, like this is just something attractive people have evolved with. No, he’ll shove this whole conversation into a mental drawer until later, when he can take it out and turn it over and over and freak out appropriately, maybe think about how Rhys’ mouth looks when he smiles all crooked like that. Or the amount of body heat he gives off. Or how long his lashes are when he blinks down at Vaughn through them.

“Right,” he says, a little sharp. “So, I have that paper? And since this place is full, I’m gonna—”

“You could come to the bar,” Rhys says quickly, a little wide-eyed, a kind of lightning-struck look.

Vaughn laughs, awkwardly. “Uh, thanks, but I don’t think compounding the hangover is gonna help.”

“No,” Rhys says, stepping in a little, “I mean you can come by to study, work, whatever. It’s closed right now. I study there sometimes, when the library gets like this.” He waves a hand at the room around them. “I have stuff to do for class too,” he barrels on when Vaughn opens his mouth. “Programming. My degree. So, if you wanted, I mean, you could.”

“You sure?” Vaughn asks slowly, feeling like he’s in quicksand and should probably stop twisting before it’s over his head.

“Definitely,” Rhys says. “Way better than holing up in the dorms. There’s food, too, if you want.”

“Okay,” Vaughn says, a little distracted, trying to think how he got here, what exact steps he took, because he doesn’t recognise anything, not a single landmark.

But Rhys grins, standing there in his ridiculous shoes, hand running through his ridiculous hair, and Vaughn decides to just give up and follow along, see where he ends up. First time for everything.

-|-

Bars, Vaughn decides, look weird in daylight.

The floor, now without the mob, has been swept clean, the chairs put up on the tables, and August is washing the counter with a washcloth when they walk past, Rhys leading him into the back to a small area with a kind of mini-kitchen, high and well-worn stools around a table, a set of cabinets with a fridge and microwave.

“You can put your stuff wherever,” Rhys says, going over to the fridge. “You want a sandwich or anything?”

“That’d be good, thanks,” Vaughn says, sending a mental warning to his stomach not to turn on him. He spreads his books and computer and notes on half the table’s surface. When he arranges himself on one of the stools, his feet hang off the floor, and he hooks his ankles around the legs.

The fish-out-of-water feeling doesn’t really go away while he watches Rhys assemble sandwiches, or when Rhys sets the plates down in the middle of the table, including water with a couple of painkillers dropped next to the glass for him, a sheepish smile that Vaughn tries to return. Or when Rhys dumps his own work on the table diagonally across from him and sits down with a sigh, opening his computer, smiling at Vaughn like it’s an everyday occurrence, like they’re totally comfortable and familiar with each other, no punchlines or pitfalls in any of it. He picks up his sandwich and tries to look like he belongs anywhere in this picture. It’s all just too unlikely.

“So,” he says, because the silence is this looming creature now. “Programming?”

Rhys looks up from his computer, EHCO eye dimming from whatever he was doing. “Yeah,” he says, and then he’s off, telling Vaughn about his degree, his plans, about getting his implants so he could be a better hacker and his childhood dream of joining Hyperion. He says it like he’s waiting for Vaughn to make fun of him, which would maybe be reasonable if Vaughn’s childhood dream hadn’t involved accounting.

“So the whole corporate ladder thing, huh?” Vaughn asks, trying to align this version of Rhys with the one who flirts with anyone and everyone, him included, while dancing so gracelessly it loops back to graceful again, flaunting himself and glowing in the attention as he flings bottles around.

“That’s really where the edge in tech is,” Rhys says, nodding, and the sharp spark of drive, of ambition in his expression is kind of hard to look away from. Vaughn drags his eyes back to his notes, coughs, reaches for his water.

They talk more than they actually get any studying done. Rhys tells him about meeting Fiona through Sasha, cracks Vaughn up telling him about Fiona’s threats if Rhys went near her sister, about how Fiona and Sasha took over the bar from the guy who adopted them, with some kind of history there even Rhys doesn’t know all of, apparently, but not all of it good.

“Wait, so they and this Felix guy... they won the bar in a _bet_?” Vaughn asks, both of them laughing, their notes pretty much forgotten, pushed to the side, an empty bag of chips crackling under Rhys’ elbow.

“Well, it was either a bet or a total con,” Rhys shrugs. “They’ve never actually admitted it outright.”

“Con artists and a hacker,” Vaughn sighs, shaking his head.

“You’re in bad company,” Rhys agrees, nodding, and setting them both off laughing again, not even noticing the way Vaughn pauses for a second at Rhys acting like he’s part of this place now.

“It’s nice, though,” Vaughn says, meaning the bar, the arrangement Rhys and the others have going. Meaning, too much, whatever he’s been included in today for some reason. Rhys’ guilt about getting him hammered, probably, if the way he keeps getting up to refill Vaughn’s water glass is any kind of clue.

“It’s a good place for strays,” Rhys says, smiling as he looks around. He snorts. “Even August, who’s like, the mangiest stray ever.”

“I can hear you, jackass!” comes through from the bar, and Rhys flips him off even though August can’t see it.

Fiona walks in, mid eye-roll, and smacks Rhys on the back of the head as she passes and gets a soda from the fridge. Vaughn’s gone completely still, waiting for... something. A sign of how she’s reading this, so maybe _he’ll_ know how he’s supposed to be reading this. _One of these things is not like the others_ , he thinks, waiting for the questions to start.

Fiona looks at him, looks at the table, looks at Rhys. Keeps looking at Rhys. Her left eyebrow becomes very animated. Rhys is studiously, determinedly frowning at his computer, looking like a guy hanging from the ledge by his fingernails.

“Don’t be late for your shift,” is what she finally says, in a totally calm voice, smiling at Vaughn like he’s supposed to know something, an impossible in-joke. She walks out, and Vaughn remembers how to get air into his lungs.

“I won’t,” Rhys tells her, only looking up once she’s gone.

Fiona’s voice comes around the corner. “And don’t touch my pasta salad. I know it was you last time, Rhys!”

“It was August!” Rhys says, then makes an _Oops!_ face at Vaughn and shrugs.

“Oh fuck you, man!” August’s disembodied voice says, punctuated by a wet cloth slapping down on a countertop.

Vaughn snorts. “Playing with fire, dude.”

“It was really good pasta salad,” Rhys says, shrugging again, and his smile is a conspiracy that tells Vaughn nothing, but there it is, just for him, nobody else around to take it.

-|-

Vaughn lasts maybe another week before he’s forced to admit that they are actually friends now.

Rhys texts him at random hours all through the day, when he’s in class, when he’s working, when he’s on a break from working. He lets Vaughn into the bar when the whole campus is on deadline meltdown and Vaughn’s at risk of cabin fever in his dorm room, and they sit around the table, quizzing each other even if Rhys doesn’t get some of the business stuff Vaughn has to obsess about and Vaughn only understands every other word of Rhys’ programming notes.

It’s easy, in a way Vaughn has never had with anyone, and it’s torture, because Rhys also checks on him to make sure he’s eating or sleeping, or if he just needs a break from staring at his notes and pulling his hair out or exhausting himself on an exercise bike.

So they’re friends, and it’s great, and it’s not exactly what he wants. He’s just going to have to deal with that. Anything else is too unlikely.

Rhys, it turns out, is a nerd. A fact that has escaped only Vaughn, judging from the way Fiona cracks up when he says something, interrupting Rhys’ verbal outpouring about what he’s been trying to code in his spare time.

“It’s not my fault!” he says. “I’ve only ever seen him dancing and mixing drinks!”

“He still looks like a nerd when he does that, you know,” Fiona says. “It’s not good camouflage.”

“He’s also right here,” Rhys groans, head in one hand, staring at his computer, faint smile on his mouth that gets wider when he catches Vaughn’s eye.

Vaughn thinks that how successful camouflage is depends a lot on what you expect to see.

-|-

He still goes to the bar late, always during Rhys’ shift, watches him throw himself bodily into everything he’s doing, glowing at every bit of attention. Rhys insists on calling the drink he’d mixed the Vodka Vaughn, no matter what Vaughn says or how many gagging noises August makes, and keeps calling it Vaughn’s ‘usual’ even if he only lets Rhys make him one every other time he goes in, out of fear for his eyesight and with a wince remembering that first hangover. He’d give up ordering it completely if Rhys didn’t pout and say, “But it’s _your_ drink,” every time he tries.

Rhys leans his forearms on the counter, lights catching the sweat that rolls over his neck tattoo and shining on the loose hair that flops in his face, flirting shamelessly with the customers and then coming back to Vaughn and doing it all over again, and Vaughn _hates_ how easily it gets to him, Rhys’ sly smirks and his casual touches. How he keeps coming back for it. He watches Rhys lean close for people to talk into his ear and wonders which ones he goes home with, trying to pick them out before Rhys decides Vaughn looks like a loser and slides back over to talk to him.

Rhys is Rhys, and they’re friends. It’s enough. It’s more than he was expecting.

-|-

“I need your help with something,” Sasha says, ambushing him on the exercise bike at the gym.

Okay, sure, she goes here too, but not usually at the same time he does. Vaughn comes to work out whenever he can fit it in, and that’s usually late, when he has no classes and either has a jump on his work or just needs to expend some energy. Sasha seems to come in early, maybe before she has to get to work, but now here she is, as flushed and damp as he is in her tank top and sweats, hair slightly puffing out of its band, and just more composed in general about it.

He stops pedalling, almost done anyway, and hops down, slipping his sweatband off. “My help?”

She shrugs. “It’s no big deal, but Rhys is having one of his obsessive freak outs about his future career or whatever, and Fiona’s busy with her own stuff. I just need help carrying some things out of the bar, some manual labour.” She smiles. “And you’re here and you look pretty strong, so.”

Vaughn laughs, looking down at his soaked-through tee and tugging it away from his body with a grimace. “Uh. Thanks, I try. And yeah, sure, whatever you need.”

She grins, bumps him on the shoulder. “Great. C’mon, it won’t take long.”

He shrugs, stuffs his sweatband into his shorts pocket and follows her out.

The stuff she needs moved is apparently a bunch of plastic bins filled with old bottles. A lot of bottles. In a lot of large bins.

“We got a little behind with the whole recycling thing,” Sasha says with a sunny smile as she hefts one of the boxes with a loud sound of shifting glass and heads out a side door. He picks up another one and follows her into an alley, puts it down where she points, rinses and repeats until he’s sweating again and a little sore, the clinking music of empty glass bouncing down the alley. It’s not like he didn’t leave his dorm to go exercise, he thinks, straining not to drop the last overfull container.

He finally takes his shirt off and mops his face, rubs at his hair, even though the fabric can’t really absorb anything at this point, and tucks it into his waistband. He doesn’t think Sasha is even out of breath.

“Come to the back,” she says, taking pity on him, “and I’ll get you a drink. Least I can do.”

They run into Rhys on the way back inside, and yeah, he does look a little harried, squinting the way he does after too much time too close to a display, hair everywhere from running his hands through it, his clothes up-all-night rumpled. The quintessential busy college look that Vaughn sees a thousand times a day, everywhere he looks. Doesn’t stop his stomach doing a stupid bit of acrobatics when he sees him, no, that’d be too merciful.

“Oh hey,” Rhys says, coming out of whatever code-induced fugue he was in. “I didn’t know you were...uh,” he trails off, looking distracted again already, staring at Vaughn’s clothes. Lack of clothes. Shit.

“I was at the gym,” he says, like an idiot. He fights the urge to cross his arms, if only because he doesn’t know if he can lift them. At least the exertion will cover the heat spreading over his face and probably down his chest. It’s alarming to be this aware of his own nipples.

“So was I,” Sasha puts in, looking smug, nudging Vaughn with an elbow. “And then I ran into Vaughn. He’s been helping out.”

“Helping out,” Rhys repeats absently, still looking at the pile of overworked flesh that is Vaughn’s current existence.

“You know,” Sasha says slowly, trying to get through to whatever small bit of awareness Rhys has of where he is in the current moment, “all that recycling we had lying around.”

Rhys frowns at her, eyes slipping back to Vaughn like he can’t help it. He blinks, and manages an awkward nod. “Right,” he says. “Yeah. I remember.” Then to Vaughn, smiling a little, “Good to see you, dude,” as his face turns pink. Sasha makes a choked noise next to Vaughn.

“Okay. Come on,” she says to him. “All this stimulating conversation is making me thirsty.”

Rhys gets pinker, apparently as proud as Vaughn about how well they’re doing acting like they’re even distantly related to functional humans.

Vaughn returns the smile, because he can’t not, and follows Sasha into the kitchen, downing three glasses of water before mumbling something about an essay and making his escape as fast as he can without access to tunnelling equipment.

He spends the whole journey back to his dorm thinking about drowning himself in the shower so he won’t replay his own mortal embarrassment _or_ Rhys’ soft, dorky and oddly private smile.

-|-

In the library, sat next to Rhys at a table, Vaughn looks up as Rhys slides a memory drive over to him, looking at him with a funny little smile when Vaughn holds it up and raises an eyebrow.

“Just plug it in,” Rhys says, watching him the whole time.

A quick load screen, and then a program flashes up that Vaughn doesn’t recognise, except he sort of does.

“Statistical modelling?” he asks, both eyebrows climbing now.

“Well,” Rhys says, looking pleased, “you said the ones they let you guys use suck, so.”

“They don’t—okay yeah they kind of do,” he says. He looks at the screen, back at Rhys. “You wrote this? Planning a software design career now, too? ‘Cause I could help you with a business model if your dreams of ladder-climbing and boardroom backstabbing are over.”

Rhys huffs, scratches his neck. “It’s for you,” he says, shifting awkwardly in his chair. “I figured, y’know, it might help you out.”

That familiar feeling of skirting danger is suddenly very, very present. His heart kicks, chain-reacting. He looks at the screen and slowly breathes through his nose. The dull quiet in the library gets lost in the roar of blood in his ears.

“It’s perfect,” he says, glancing at Rhys, at the screen, at any hope of safety. He gives up and bumps Rhys’ knee with his. “Thanks, bro.”

“It was nothing,” Rhys says, smiling, self-satisfied, cracking his knuckles before he turns back to his own computer.

Watching Rhys’ profile, the flush to the back of his neck, the shape of his mouth, Vaughn thinks that has to be the biggest lie he’s ever heard, and Rhys didn’t even know he was telling it.

-|-

He lets Fiona talk him into going over the bar’s books, figuring since _she_ lets him get away with not paying for his drinks and distracting her bartender multiple nights a week, he owes her.

She leads him to a small area above the bar, mostly dust and storage, and a small office with a beaten-up leather chair behind a desk. He sits and she leaves him poring over the last few years of the bar’s finances. Everything in the room gives off a kind of history, all of it worn in certain ways. There’s a small gun in a locked case on the wall.

“Long story,” Fiona says quietly, looking at the gun.

“I bet,” he says, trying not to look at the pain on her face.

He can spot the time Fiona and Sasha took over, like layers in sedimentary rock, where certain payments with very generic headings stop and the general recording of income gets more regular. Vaughn isn’t clear how much he’s supposed to know about whatever past Fiona, Sasha and August have – or what they still get up to outside the business of the bar – but she’s letting him see this now. He’s oddly touched.

It doesn’t take him long to find a couple of ways to make things easier for them to run the bar, places they could cut costs a little, though he doesn’t touch the account getting regular payments from the bar’s income that’s just marked as _For Sasha_. He’s out of the chair and stretching when Fiona comes back in with two mugs of coffee.

“Felix wasn’t... the most honest about some things,” she says. “I really appreciate you taking a look.”

“No problem,” he shrugs, meaning it, and less surprised by meaning it all the time. “You overpaid on your taxes last time around, by the way,” he says, smiling. “You can get a rebate.”

She laughs, clasps his shoulder. “I’m glad we have you around. And not just because it’s the best decision Rhys has made in a while.”

Vaughn doesn’t know what to say to that. It’s not like he’d be here if it wasn’t for Rhys, so he just nods and drinks his coffee.

-|-

They both get a little stressed and quiet for a couple weeks, the cycle of submitting papers and getting papers back, cramming for quizzes and panicking about grades, the always slightly too-high tide of deadlines dragging on them both.

Vaughn catches himself _missing_ Rhys after a few days when infrequent contact becomes no contact, glancing at his phone, staring into space, generally acting like someone waiting at the harbour for their love to return from sea. It’s not good. It might actually be a new low. Vaughn, the planner for disasters, the avoider of pressure, relying on something that could disappear, that isn’t really there at all in the sense he keeps dwelling on?

Of course, the next night Rhys shows up at his door with takeout and a movie, standing in the hallway in a faded yellow hoodie and jeans so worn they’re mostly holes, somehow just as detrimental to Vaughn’s wellbeing as when he’s in a tight tee and pants that show off his ass, slick with sweat and rolling his hips. Maybe it’s because everyone sees that Rhys, and that Rhys throws himself at everyone. This Rhys is different, closer to the ground where the rest of them spend their time. He looks like the Rhys that Vaughn would have imagined for himself if he’d been anywhere close to daring enough.

“Hey,” Rhys says, like he’s not sure of his welcome, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I kinda needed a study break. Fiona was about to kill me. So, I have too much food, and a movie where lots of stuff explodes. If you want.”

“Yeah, totally. Come in,” he says, kicking himself into motion, kicking himself generally. Rhys ducks his head and grins, sitting himself down on the bed, carefully moving Vaughn’s notes so they don’t get mixed up. Vaughn sighs at the heavy drop in his belly, commits the whole scene of Rhys in his bed to memory, and then walks over and starts poking through the bag of food as Rhys sets up the movie.

At some point he must doze off, because he blinks slowly and realises his head is against Rhys’ shoulder, his glasses are off and he’s half lying down, Rhys’ arm braced on his back to keep him flopping over. He’s warm and tired and all he can smell is Rhys and the fabric softener on Rhys’ hoodie. Rhys’ thumb makes absent circles in the middle of his back, and he shuts his eyes, the willing fool, the needful doomed, and drifts again thinking that he’s still better off than he was before.

So maybe he needs this. Maybe they _both_ do, and their different reasons don’t matter. Would it be so bad?

-|-

Fiona invites him out for pizza with the others, and won’t let him say no.

“Rhys would’ve asked you,” she tells him, as if that might make him think it was a good idea. A safe idea. “But he’s being an idiot at the moment.” It wouldn’t make him smile, but she says it in her big sister voice.

“Yeah, okay. I mean, so long as you’re sure,” he says.

“I am,” she nods. “You’re part of the family.”

It’s not said in a way that seems like arguing will be accepted, so he doesn’t, just drops his chin and ropes himself back together, a little more securely, maybe a little bit better. By the time he looks up, she’s off talking to Sasha, who’s smirking while refusing to give Rhys the keys to their slightly rough-looking pickup.

They pile into a booth in a pizza place Vaughn hasn’t been to before, vinyl creaking under them. Rhys and August get into a fight about pineapple that ends with Sasha taking their menus away. They split three enormous pizzas and all end up groaning and leaning back in the seats, Vaughn idly watching Rhys chase the straw in his drink with his tongue. For a few minutes he’s too drugged up with food and a lack of feeling like the extraneous cog to care that he’s not covering for himself very well.

“Bathroom,” Rhys says, making August swear as Rhys knees him on the way out of the booth. Sasha tells him he’ll live and pats him on the head like a labradoodle, Vaughn trying hard not to laugh into his soda, Fiona rolling her eyes.

“Like I said,” Fiona says to him while Sasha and August start an argument about dessert, “Rhys is an idiot.”

Vaughn blinks. “It was probably an accident.” Even if he likes messing with August, Rhys really can’t control his limbs sometimes.

She sighs. “Look, it’s just... you two are good, that’s all. I know it’s weird sometimes. Rhys hasn’t really—Well, he’s just not great at this.”

He’s frowning now, drink forgotten in his hand, condensation sliding icy fingers in between his. “This? Eating in restaurants?”

Fiona is giving him a weird look. She opens her mouth, then sighs. “Okay,” she says, in reply to Vaughn doesn’t even know what. “I tried, and maybe it’s not my place. I just know he means a lot to you, that’s all.”

_That_ makes him sit up, a lot of pizza suddenly feeling like a lot of river stones in the bottom of his stomach. “We’re friends,” he says, because they are, and because really, no, he has to stop this thread before it tangles him up too much.

“Who’s friends?” Rhys asks, slipping back into the booth, on the outside this time at the look August shoots him, sitting down opposite Vaughn.

“We are,” Vaughn tells him. Tells Fiona. Tells himself.

Rhys cocks his head, bemused smile starting up. “Of course we are,” he says. Vaughn tries not to look at Fiona like _See?_ What did she think he was going to say? He bumps his fist with Rhys’ when Rhys holds it out to him, smiles, helpless, always helpless.

“Wow,” Sasha says, at what Vaughn isn’t sure. Probably August putting his foot in it again.

“Are we getting dessert or not?” August asks. “‘Cause if not I’m just gonna put this spoon through my eye and right into my brain.”

“Oh, so you finally found it?” Rhys says sweetly, turning to him, and that sets them off again, until one of them nearly knocks Fiona’s drink over and she cuts in to restore order.

“No dessert,” she says. “I’ll end up leaving you both here, and then I’ll have to interview new bartenders.”

“Aw c’mon,” Rhys whines. It shouldn’t be endearing. “I wanted ice cream.”

“We’re all stunned, Rhys,” Sasha says. “But if I even look at more food right now I’m gonna explode.”

They spend another ten minutes arguing about the bill before they make it outside, fresh air making them all stand a little straighter, sighing the sighs of the well-fed.

“Well _I’m_ gonna get some ice cream,” Rhys declares to the world at large. He nudges Vaughn. “Hey, you’ll come with me right? Forget these weaklings, we can forge our own path.”

Vaughn can’t see her, but he can feel Fiona’s eyes on the back of his neck. He doesn’t turn around.

“Yeah, I could go for ice cream,” he says, and Rhys pumps his fist.

“Awesome,” he says, grinning at Vaughn. “Knew I could count on you. C’mon, I know a place, it’s not far.”

“Why am I not surprised by that?” he says, and Rhys laughs, shortening his stride so Vaughn doesn’t have to try to catch up. The sidewalk isn’t that narrow, but their arms keep bumping anyway, cool air on one side of him, Rhys’ warmth on the other.

Rhys spends the short walk describing in detail every kind of ice cream this tiny parlour apparently serves, Vaughn snagged on the sound of his voice, the motion of his hands, carried along like a kite. When they walk up to the sort of fold-out serving hatch in the front wall, the owner grins like Rhys is her favourite grandchild.

“How much do you trust me?” Rhys asks, turning to him, smiling, loose and happy, wind pushing his hair around.

“Too much, probably,” Vaughn says. Rhys’ smile gets wider and he drops a hand onto Vaughn’s shoulder to pull him close, like it’s anything he needs to do.

-|-

Vaughn stays up all night finishing an essay on the agency problem between shareholders and managers in publicly listed companies, swimming in energy drink and subsisting on protein bars, and passes out the following afternoon, facedown and still in his clothes.

The next night is usually the quietest one that Rhys works, quiet enough that August is usually dealing with inventory or is just absent altogether. Quiet enough that he knows when he shows up Rhys will grab him a stool, pull it up to the bar, and spend almost his whole shift with only a handful of other people to serve, and the rest of it leaning into Vaughn’s space. He’ll stay there, all lit up, the only fire on the landscape, hands on the counter like the tail end of an arrow, and neither of them will have to raise their voices once.

-|-

One night he shows up at the bar and finds that apparently every person on the planet has decided to cram themselves into it, a deafening amount of noise hitting him like a brick wall as soon as he gets through the doors.

He considers just turning around on the spot and leaving, because there’s no way he’s getting to the counter without bruises and probably a concussion. He doesn’t need to drink this badly. He doesn’t actually need to drink _at all_ , but that’s not a point in his favour when he’s at this bar again, and reliant on pretext for his sanity, so.

“Vaughn!” he hears, because somehow, Rhys has managed to spot him, even if Vaughn can’t see anything of Rhys. Rhys could be two feet in front of Vaughn right now and he probably wouldn’t be able to see him. “Vaughn! Hey, wait there, okay?!”

He already feels too hot, the combined body heat of a small island nation pouring over him, and he thinks, no, he’s going back to his dorm and he’ll text Rhys and say he’ll come another night, it’s fine, it doesn’t have to be—

But there’s Rhys, like a cork bobbing on the ocean, still a few inches above most of the crowd. He appears out of the thicket of arms and legs and torsos and grins, sweeping his hair back, comes right up to Vaughn like nothing could have stopped him, man on a mission, spy with vital intelligence.

“Don’t go,” Rhys says, having to raise his voice, catching Vaughn’s wrist like he might have to stop Vaughn bolting, like that would ruin everything for him. In a kind of mental surprise attack, Vaughn considers that he’s never kissed someone he really wanted, and that he’s never wanted quite so much.

“It’s packed in here,” he says, and Rhys nods, but he’s still holding Vaughn’s wrist, and Vaughn needs to stop looking at his mouth.

“I’ll get you to the front,” Rhys says, and then they’re pushing forward, Rhys holding tightly onto him, and Vaughn having no choice because why should that start now?

He follows in Rhys’ wake, managing not to trip or be tripped, the pulse in his wrist a captive in Rhys’ hand. They reach the bar, all but crash into it, and Rhys lets go to duck around and under, reappearing on the other side of the counter. Only now Vaughn spots August and Sasha also serving quickly, all hands on deck, trying to prevent a riot.

“Sorry,” Rhys says, smiling at someone as they come up to order, pulling out glasses while he talks. “I was gonna text you a warning, but, well.” He nods at the room around them. “We kinda got overrun.”

“Why is it like this?” Vaughn asks, leaning on the bar like a piece of driftwood in a typhoon.

“It always is right before finals start,” Rhys says, handing bottles over, going where Sasha points, and Vaughn realises he’d lost track of what week they were in. Suddenly he _does_ need a drink, which Rhys happily hands him, and then, typically, won’t let him pay for. Fiona’s going to kill Rhys one day, if she ever finds someone better looking and better at getting everyone within ten feet of the bar to buy an extra shot just to keep talking to him. Vaughn’s not too worried about it.

“Well you don’t have to babysit me, man,” he tells Rhys. “Do what you gotta do.”

“You kidding?” Rhys laughs, pulling tops off more bottles, filling glasses and sending them in a slide down the bar. He’s rocking his hips to the rhythm of pouring one drink after another. “It’s no fun if I can’t talk to you while I work.”

“Fun,” Vaughn says, with implied quotation marks as he aims a significant look around them. It really is heaving, people jostling him every few minutes, impossible to think with the noise.

Rhys appears from further down the counter, already looking flushed in his tight V-cut shirt that shows Vaughn more of the tattoos on his chest than he’s ever seen before, his hair messy in a deliberately-styled way Vaughn thinks Sasha might be responsible for. Damn right Rhys knew it was going to be busy in here, siren on the rocks that he is.

“You can go if it’s too much,” Rhys says, putting a hand on Vaughn’s forearm, little concerned frown line between his eyebrows. Vaughn doesn’t tell him it’s been too much for a long, long time, because it doesn’t matter when here he is again, washing up like the inevitable shipwreck.

“I’ll stick around for a while,” he says, putting his weight against the bar as Rhys’ smile spans his face and Vaughn’s breath heaves, his pulse remembering the palm of Rhys’ hand.

“You’re the best,” Rhys says, and winks, already dancing again, klutzing his way through more orders, flirting as he goes.

Vaughn settles against the counter and drinks his beer.

-|-

He gets in a good couple days of freaking out and spiralling about finals before Sasha texts him to come down to the bar, no excuses.

It doesn’t occur to him until it’s already happening, but Vaughn’s never showed up and had Rhys not be there, not be where he’s supposed to be. It’s not a nice feeling, when things you count on aren’t where you’re used to, especially if you didn’t realise just how much you count on them.

“He’s sick,” Fiona tells him when he walks into the back, before he can ask, which he’ll save for later when he wants to feel pathetic some more, as a nice change of pace from the academic flavour of panic.

“He gets headaches,” Sasha tacks on, because Fiona’s explanation can’t have eased whatever look is on his face. He untangles his fingers and drops them from in front of him, shoves them in his pockets where they can’t wander off and get him into trouble.

“Headaches?” he asks, because Rhys has never mentioned it, not to him anyway.

“All that tech in his brain,” Sasha says, shaking her head.

“Hey, that stuff’s cool,” August says, drying glasses, and shrugs when they look at him. “What? It is.”

“If you want, you can take this to him,” Fiona says, picking up a small plastic bag from the counter. “I usually do it, but you should, so long as you’re here.” She smiles, holding it out. “I think he’d like that.”

Vaughn takes the bag like something with thorns all over it, because Fiona has that look again that says she knows something. But it doesn’t seem like another option is being presented. He looks in the bag and sees a little Styrofoam container.

“Soup?” he guesses. They want him to take Rhys soup? Rhys would like it if Vaughn took him soup instead of Fiona, who apparently has a whole routine in place for this?

Sasha snorts. “No. Ice cream. From the place Rhys is obsessed with.” She smirks, because Vaughn knows his face is doing something treacherous now, if it wasn’t already. “You know the one.”

“I—Yeah,” he says. Neither of them look surprised. Must be nice.

“You can take it to him. You know where his dorm is,” Fiona says, no question and no surprise. He feels like he showed up two acts into the play and he’s supposed to know the plot, but he doesn’t. He shouldn’t even be on the stage.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know where it is.”

-|-

It takes a few knocks before there’s a shuffling sound and Rhys opens his door a crack, the gloom behind him only broken by the flicker of some movie or show playing with the volume way down. He squints, and it seems to take him a moment before he realises who it is.

“Hey,” Vaughn says, softly, because from the bloodless colour of his face and the way every line of him is drawn tight, Rhys really does have a hell of a headache. He doesn’t have his cybernetic arm attached, just a missing sleeve on his shirt.

“Did I,” Rhys starts, croaking, swallowing. “Did I forget you were coming over?”

“Uh, no,” he says, and remembers the bag. “Fiona wanted me to give you this. Apparently it’s ice cream? For, y’know. Your headache.” Fewer words, he thinks, less noise. _Give him the bag and go_.

“Oh,” Rhys says, looking down at it without taking it. He looks back at Vaughn. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Vaughn says again, reaching for a reassuring smile.

“Right,” Rhys says quietly. “Uh. Come in.” He turns and slips back into the unlit room, and since he’s been left literally holding the bag, Vaughn follows him inside.

Rhys’ room, being a dorm room, is the same as his and countless others, just with different posters, different stuff on the desk, different clothes on the floor and the back of his chair. His arm stands in a charging cradle on the desk, status lights throwing tiny shadows. But it’s Rhys’ stuff, Rhys’ clothes, Rhys’ smell and presence everywhere, and it’s nice in a way that makes Vaughn want to rub at the middle of his chest until the bruised twinge goes away, to not open the door again because the world doesn’t belong in here.

“I didn’t know ice cream parlours delivered,” he says, for something to say.

“They don’t,” Rhys says, plucking a spoon out of a mug before he levers himself down onto the bed. “I think they just like me.”

“Of course they do,” Vaughn says, putting the bag down next to Rhys. “I’ll uh—Hey, are you sure you’re okay? Like, you don’t need a doctor?” He’s impressed with himself for keeping it back that long, the worry, the urge to fix it, doling it out careful as he can, like something flammable.

Rhys has two fingers rubbing at his temple, where the data port is. “No,” he says. “It’ll pass. Painkillers won’t touch it; it’s not that kind of headache.” He gives Vaughn a weak little smile, not helping the twinge at all, really. “Ice cream helps though.”

“Well,” Vaughn says, “ice cream helps everything.” He huffs at Rhys’ small nod.

“You help,” Rhys says, even quieter, and then winces, pain or awkwardness kicking in.

All Vaughn can think to say is, “I’m glad.” All he trusts himself to say. He glances at the computer propped up on the pillows, playing some old black-and-white movie.

“You wanna stay?” Rhys asks, glancing up at him. “Help me eat this before it melts?” He’s wearing old pyjama pants and a baggy tee with the logo worn off the front, circles under his eyes, and he looks small in a way that Vaughn can’t accept. Rhys is the glowing figure in front of the crowd, the idol in the golden temple. He shouldn’t have to hurt or be lonely, when there are so many other people to do that.

“I can stay if you want,” he says, clawing toward casual as hard as he can.

“Yeah, that’d be good,” Rhys sighs, slumped and tired and miserable. Vaughn would have offered to stay, if he’d thought Rhys wanted him to. There are a lot of things he’d do, if he thought Rhys wanted them.

So he stays. They sit on the bed, and watch Rhys’ (ridiculously sappy, as it turns out) movie, even if he can’t hear most of the dialogue, and Vaughn eats as little of the ice cream as he can get away with, since it’s meant to be helping Rhys’ headache.

“You should lie down,” Vaughn tells Rhys, because he’s kind of swaying, head drooping between his shoulders. Vaughn doubts he slept at all last night, from the look of him.

He gets Rhys to hand him the container, just a little completely melted honeycomb at the bottom and tucks himself back as Rhys lies down with his head next to Vaughn’s knee, eyes barely open. Rhys shifts a little, until his head is almost on Vaughn’s leg, slightly raised, and Vaughn’s about to offer to grab one of the pillows, but Rhys’ eyes close all the way and he lets out a long, shaky breath that changes Vaughn’s mind.

The movie is on a loop, starting up from the beginning, so Vaughn watches the parts he wasn’t here for with Rhys’ head half in his lap, missing the scenes where he glances down at Rhys’ face, still slightly pinched even now he’s asleep. Vaughn brushes the hair off Rhys’ forehead, feels the temperature of his skin with the backs of his fingers like he knows how to make it better, no matter what effect Rhys seems to think he has.

It’s warm in the room, and he loses focus on the screen, blinking in and out, head resting back against the wall, most of his attention on Rhys curling against him, making small distressed noises until Vaughn puts a hand on his shoulder, then the top of his head.

“You’re okay,” he says, mostly a whisper, fingers running through Rhys’ hair slowly, carefully, heartbeat tripping. Rhys sighs through his nose and settles again, so Vaughn keeps the motion up, lulling himself as much as Rhys.

There’s a humming in his chest, and a hollow feeling, like his heart is all corridors and no rooms, every footstep rebounding off the walls. There are words lurking under his breath that terrify him. It’s dark enough and quiet enough that he can’t ignore it, and there’s nothing but Rhys in here, with him, and he’s made such a mess of this without hardly taking a step.

Rhys stays totally out of it until almost the last of the third run of the movie, groaning and sitting up with Vaughn’s hand going from his hair to his back to help him.

“Thanks,” Rhys says, not looking at him.

“It’s okay,” Vaughn tells him, but he gets off the bed, pulls his clothes straight, stretches out his legs with a grunt, one foot tingling. He has no idea what time it is with the daylight blocked out and no clocks in the room besides the hourglass effect of the looping movie. It’s been a couple of hours at least. He could have left the ice cream with Fiona. He could have said no when Rhys asked him to come in. There are a lot of things he could have done.

“I’d better head out,” he says. Rhys is hitting stop on the movie, and he looks at Vaughn over his shoulder.

“You could stick around,” Rhys says. “I have other movies, I promise.”

Like he means every word. Like he’s just standing behind the bar with his smile on a platter. Vaughn wants to hate it. Vaughn wants not to love it, this thing that none of those other people get. There was a line somewhere, and if he looked behind him now, he wouldn’t be able to see it, just the horizon drawn neatly across Rhys’ floor.

Fuck. _Fuck._

“Thanks,” he says, trying to make the shrug look carefree, “but I should probably let you get some real sleep, or you’ll never make it to finals.”

Rhys looks at him for a long second where Vaughn feels like an overfull glass set on a slant, about to tip over, and then he nods, sitting back against the wall again.

“Sure, yeah,” Rhys says, sounding disappointed, and something tugs sharply in Vaughn’s gut, but he _can’t_. He’s screwed up too much already, pushing more and more past the point where he can tell where their versions of this friendship separate. It’s all a blur, smeared together, the borders scuffed out. And here he is, acting like he can live in two houses at once, running on dream logic. Like the world really does cease beyond that door over there.

“I’ll see you at the bar,” Vaughn says, not knowing if he means it, not the way he usually does. He needs to pull back, right now, because the ground is there and he’s heading straight for it.

“Right,” Rhys says, glancing at him, scratching at his scalp. “See you.”

Vaughn nods, backing up, finally turning and heading for the door. When it shuts behind him, he slumps, grits his teeth, rubs his trembling hands over his face. It’s cooler out here, and a lot brighter, and that’s why his eyes are hurting.

He knew this would happen. He _knew_ , and he decided to ignore it, and he wants so much to go back through that door, undo everything he just did, but not for any acceptable, possible reason. He sniffs, squares his shoulders, and walks down the hall to the stairs.

It’s past time he started listening to himself again.

-|-

Vaughn’s never been so glad for finals in his life.

He goes to class, studies, camps out in the library. He throws himself into his workouts until his body is as wrung-out as his brain, and limps back to his dorm room, falling asleep with notebook paper sticking to his cheek. He drags himself down to the cafeteria for cardboard toast and laminated eggs, and then does it all again, occasionally remembering to sit and feel sorry for himself.

He _doesn’t_ call Rhys. Or go to the bar. Or answer texts from Fiona and Sasha and, fuck, even August, that start out only semi-serious and devolve into long strings of question marks and short bursts of monosyllables. He just needs a chance to find his balance again, that’s all. He just needs a little time, distance, perspective.

Three days go by, then a week, then two. Vaughn hates himself for counting.

-|-

When his phone buzzes across his overflowing desk at one in the morning, he doesn’t bother checking who it is before he answers, just pushes back in his chair and takes a slow breath, puts the phone to his ear like it might sting him.

“I thought you’d be working,” he says.

_“I am,”_ Rhys says, and if Vaughn strains a little he thinks he can hear music. _“Taking a break.”_

He can do this. He had to start eventually, right? He just needs to rein it in. “Cool. How’s it going over there?”

_“The usual, pretty much,”_ Rhys says, matching him word for disaffected word. _“Except some douchey guy in a suit tried to hit on Sasha. Made an issue of it. She’s fine, though.”_

Vaughn tries to translate his frown into a disapproving hum. “Did you hit him?”

Rhys snorts, a little burst of static. _“Dude, no, I suck at punching people. Fiona hit him. Then Sasha hit him. I think August wanted a turn too, but we needed two sets of hands working the bar. Plus the last time he tried to throw a punch he broke his thumb.”_

Vaughn snorts despite himself, then sits up straighter. This is already getting too risky; he can feel it wanting to slide too fast through his hands, burning him. “Sounds like a busy night.”

He can hear Rhys moving around, something rustling. _“You stopping by tonight? Give me a chance to make another Vodka Vaughn?”_

Vaughn laughs, sounding a little forced. Now that Rhys has asked the question, he feels like a coward all over again, sourness creeping into his belly. “I keep telling you you’re not calling it that,” he says. Like he always does. He lost that one a long time ago, but they kept passing it back and forth anyway.

_“Too late, it’s your drink, I made it just for you and you’re stuck with it,”_ Rhys says, taking the bait. Slide, whip, right through his palms, the eager bite of it turning everything red.

“Fine,” he says, too warm. “But I don’t think I can tonight. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do.”

_“Vaughn,”_ Rhys whines, sounding like... well. Not fair. Vaughn shifts in his seat a little. _“C’mon. Please? I’m so bored.”_

“You have a whole bar full of people to flirt with,” Vaughn says, partly just to reprimand himself. Should’ve turned his phone off. Might have, if he thought Rhys would get a grip on his courage so much sooner than him. “You can’t be bored.”

There’s a few seconds of silence, marked by breathing, his and Rhys’ alternating, something else that’s probably going to haunt him and make him loathe himself the next time he jerks off, face in the sheets, chest on fire.

_“They’re not you though.”_

“Rhys,” Vaughn says, and then runs out of words. Draws a total blank on everything except that, like a big bright condemning stamp across every thought he can lay his hands on.

A sharp sigh fuzzes down the line. _“Sorry. Whatever. You’re busy, it’s fine. You don’t have to come.”_

“I want to,” Vaughn says, brittle. “I’ve just got a lot of...” He rubs a hand over his face. Shit. “I miss you too, y’know.”

He can’t do this. His heart won’t take it. It’s got its palms against the walls, trying to outgrow the space he’s given it, only a matter of time before it gives up on him and tries tunnelling out.

_“Okay,”_ Rhys says, soft. Resigned.

Fuck, suddenly he’s angry, furious at this whole disaster of a thing. He wants to tell Rhys... what? Tell him _what?_

He’s never known, has he? Never tried to know, and it’s never bothered him before. Because it’s never mattered. And now it does, and he still doesn’t have a clue. It’s so fucked up. You can walk through the world and just never learn the language, never pick up the gestures, and still not understand why you can’t communicate anything. Why nobody explains it. Why you ended up alone.

Live somewhere your whole life and never see a map. Have a heart and it’s the same problem. He’s so riddled with want and frustration the wind could whistle all through him, and he’s _tired_.

That’s what he ought to tell Rhys: _I should have tried loving someone before you, so I’d at least know how when I found you. You didn’t ask for any of this._

“You still there?” he asks, small, quiet.

_“Yeah,”_ Rhys breathes, a choppy little noise in Vaughn’s ear.

“Rhys. Rhys, I’m...” Sorry? Trying? Lost? Scared?

Asking how much trouble you’re worth only leads to disappointment.

There’s a bang, a voice, distant on the line. _“Yeah, I’m coming,”_ Rhys calls out, faint, not to him. Then, _“I’ve gotta go. I’ll... I’ll see you?”_ It’s an honest question.

“Yeah,” Vaughn says, hoarse. “Yeah, of course you will.”

Click of the connection breaking. Rattle of all the air leaving Vaughn’s lungs. Quiet of the room like a snowfall settling, nothing moving for miles around.

He tries to focus on what’s in front of him, tries to think of what he could have said, and can’t do either. He gets up and walks around the room, pacing. He could go to the bar, talk to Rhys – if he _can_ talk to Rhys, about any of it, in a way that doesn’t feel like getting blood everywhere. He digs his fingers into the corners of his eyes and decides he still wouldn’t know the right thing even then, drops down onto his bed, breathes harshly into the pillow.

He doesn’t sleep, no, he just _stops_ , and does his best not to dream.

-|-

Finals week passes, and Vaughn runs out of excuses, sick of feeling like he’s nursing a wound somewhere. He doesn’t want to feel like this, but he does. He doesn’t want to be afraid, and he is. He was never asked for his opinion on any of it. He never meant to change, can’t quite stop following himself, the him that didn’t need this, that wouldn’t have known what it is.

He walks by the bar, stops and just looks at it. It’s just a bar in a college town, ordinary, not really remarkable or especially frightening.

Tomorrow, he says to himself, placating, as if there’s still some point to consider, like he might change his mind. He can live without this, even if it hurts, obviously he can.

But he doesn’t want to.

He’s not ready to live with it, maybe, but he wants to be. He wants what he can have.

-|-

The bar’s door opens, same as always. Nothing inside looks any different. The counter still has streaks from a damp cloth on it, the smell of cleaner hanging around in the air.

“Vaughn,” Fiona says, walking over, and he tries not to flinch.

“Hey, Fiona,” he says. “How’s it going?”

“You mean you don’t know?” She asks, arms crossed, and then, “Oh, yeah. That’s right. You haven’t been here.”

He gives an awkward, truly painful sort of chuckle. “Yeah, I—Sorry. Finals, y’know?”

She nods, in a way that reminds him she does actually own a firearm. “Heard something about that,” she says.

“Sorry,” he says again. Might as well get into the habit. “I was—There was some stuff I had to deal with.”

“And?” she says, eyebrow raised.

“Still dealing,” he says.

“It’s harder to do it on your own,” she tells him, first crack in the stone he’s seen so far. She’s a very good big sister.

“I’m getting that,” he says. “Old habits, y’know?”

Fiona drops her arms to her sides, rolls her eyes before fixing him with a stare. “You’re going to fix it,” she says. _You’d better damn well fix it_ , he hears, crystal clear and klaxon loud, consequences looming if he doesn’t.

“Oh hey Vaughn,” Sasha says, coming down from upstairs. “Are you finished with whatever the hell was going on with you and Rhys now?”

This time he does flinch.

“He’s working on it,” Fiona says to Sasha, not looking away from him, like he might scurry into the woodwork if she does. Fair enough, considering.

“Good,” Sasha sighs. “Rhys has been a total mess.” She squints at him. “You don’t look much better.”

“Finals,” he says, and now they’re both rolling their eyes at him.

“Is it just the avoidance thing, or did you do something else?” Fiona asks.

“I didn’t do anything else,” he says, which isn’t totally true, but she means to Rhys, and he hasn’t done anything to Rhys other than hide from him. Himself on the other hand... yeah, himself he’s done a real number on. Himself he might never forgive.

The side door to the alley clangs open, and August comes in, joining the judgement parade. “Hey, it’s Vaughn.”

“Hey, August,” he sighs.

“All done being a fuckup?” August asks, making Sasha wheel on him. Vaughn is shamefully glad for the new target on the range.

“Helpful,” Sasha says.

“Wasn’t really tryin’a be helpful,” August shrugs.

“Just finish taking out the trash, August,” Fiona says over her shoulder before she looks back at Vaughn. “I get that this stuff isn’t easy, but you and Rhys need to talk.”

“I know,” he says, holding up his hands. “We will.”

“I meant it when I said you’re good for each other,” she says, “and if you want it to work out between you, you need to talk through it, not freak out and run away. I’m sure it’s worth the awkwardness if you really love each other.”

Vaughn knew exactly what was going on just a few seconds ago, he’s sure he did.

“No,” he says, stepping towards her. “Wait a second.”

“Couldn’t you just kiss and get over it already?” Sasha says. “Rhys’ moping is honestly exhausting. I’ve seen that stupid movie a hundred times now. I can’t pretend to cry anymore.”

“No,” Vaughn says again. “Listen. It’s not like that, really it’s not.” He gets a pair of matching frowns.

“So, what, you were actually here to drink this whole time?” Sasha snorts.

“Vaughn, it’s okay,” Fiona says. “We care about both of you.”

“There’s no way you were just coming here all that time for no reason,” Sasha says. She frowns. “You weren’t just leading Rhys on. Right? Tell me that’s not what this is about.”

“No,” Vaughn says, third time now. “We’re not—What? No! I don’t even _like_ bars, okay? I hardly ever drink!”

“So you drink here a lot for someone who doesn’t drink or like going to bars,” Fiona says.

“I’ve never even paid for a drink here!”

“That’s ‘cause Rhys always pays for yours, dumbass!” August calls as he carries trash bags out the side door to the alley.

“He does,” Sasha says when Vaughn looks at them.

When he walked in, he thinks. That’s when it started to go wrong. Pick a time, it doesn’t matter which.

Fiona laughs. “He threatened to quit if I tried to take your money. Said it would ruin the dates you apparently didn’t even know you were on.”

“Dates,” he says, flat, just steamrolled down to nothing. Rhys has never talked about dating, not that Vaughn remembers. If Rhys wanted that, he’d have it, and it wouldn’t be from Vaughn. There’s no way Rhys has been—

“And to think I could’ve been double charging this whole time and gotten away with it,” Fiona sighs. “I guess I’ve really lost my touch.”

“Don’t feel bad, Fi,” Sasha says to her. “There’s no anticipating this level of failure.” She rounds on Vaughn. “Rhys spends every second he’s around you flirting and hanging on your every word, asking you out for ice cream, having study dates with you because you’re both total nerds, and you just, what? Never noticed?” Her face has taken on a kind of stunned irritation. She almost seems impressed.

“He’s like that with everyone,” Vaughn protests. It’s _true._ “He always flirts, he’s into everyone. Total strangers. He’s like that with _you_.”

Sasha’s expression doesn’t change. “No, he’s really not,” she says slowly. “Wow, obviously my mistake was assuming you guys aren’t both total idiots.”

Fiona snorts. “Why would you ever make that assumption?”

“I thought they were just _partially_ stupid!” Sasha says, turning to Fiona and waving a hand at him. “I mean, honestly.” She turns back to him. “ _Honestly_.”

“Okay,” Vaughn says, the end of his rope dangling about a mile up over his head, “I think I should probably just—”

“Oh no,” Sasha says, darting forward and grabbing his arm. “You’re not leaving now.”

He tries to step back and can’t. “God, you’re strong. What the hell—”

“You’re dealing with this,” she says and Fiona nods. “I’m not putting up with another night of Rhys crying into _my_ fudge brownie ice cream because of his doomed and epic love for you or whatever the fuck. No way. I have a _life_. I have _needs_.”

“She does, dude,” August says, walking back through.

“His _what_ ,” Vaughn croaks, and Sasha is just dragging him along now, towards the back of the bar, Fiona following behind, he suspects to catch him if he breaks free. “Wait, _now?_ We can’t do this now. Tell her, Fiona.”

“It’s our bar,” Fiona says with a sweet smile. “And we can do what we want.” Her tone is less _Talk about your feelings_ and more _Dispose of this corpse_ and honestly, Vaughn is gonna have bruises, Sasha has a grip like one of those machines that crushes cars into executive paperweights.

“Rhys!” Sasha yells. “I swear, he’s been drying the same plate for like, twenty minutes. Rhys, get out here!”

Rhys pops out of the kitchen doorway, dishtowel in his hand, earbuds hanging from his collar. He takes in the three of them. “Uh. Hey guys. Everything okay?”

“No,” Fiona and Sasha say at the same time, in the same exact voice.

“You two need to talk,” Sasha says, and bodily _shoves_ Vaughn at Rhys. “Like grownups. Before I kill you both. With my bare hands. _God._ ”

She stalks off, and Fiona gives them a look that could probably level small buildings, then wanders off. To give them privacy. Fuck.

“Shit, what did you do?” Rhys whispers, looking over his shoulder.

“What?” Vaughn asks, rubbing his wrist, because _ow_. Sasha must spend her morning workouts breaking walnuts or something. “No, I—” He looks up at Rhys, and yeah, there we go, there’s the panic, nice of you to show up. “They—Shit. Okay. This is happening.”

“Vaughn, what’s wrong?” Rhys asks, slipping into concerned friend mode just like that, stepping closer, dropping the towel on the bar, reaching for him. All of it just makes it harder for Vaughn to get his breath back. Not one thing has gone the way he expected, counting all the way back to the first time he came in here. No control, ever, from minute one.

“They wanted us to talk about—Fuck. I don’t—I’ve never—” He cuts his hands through the air like he can bat his own fear out of the way, pushing on the ocean. “So, yeah, we’ve never talked about this, but I’m not—” Years, he thinks. It’s going to take him years to sum up about eight minutes of sexual history. “I’m into guys,” he says, and winces. Maybe not years then, once he subtracts all finesse and ability from it. “I mean, I’m—yeah. That.” He breathes, finally, ragged.

“Wait, what?” Rhys says, and come _on_.

“You heard,” Vaughn says, because he’s not doing that again, no way, he just aged a decade. “And Sasha and Fiona said that you weren’t just into, like, people generally – or that you _are_ , I mean that’s cool, whatever,but specifically you’re into—”

“You,” Rhys says, playing catch up, but not as much as Vaughn apparently is, his eyes widening as he gets it. Shit, no wonder Sasha and Fiona are done with them, just look at them, they’re hopeless. “I’m into you.” He doesn’t sound very happy about it, understandably.

“Right, yeah,” Vaughn says dumbly, because _I’m into you_ is just bouncing around like a live grenade in the room, a bullet ricochet, pinging off the walls. “That.” And then, because he honestly can’t help it, “Really?”

Rhys stares at him. Rhys has stared at him before, sure, but Vaughn can’t remember being stared at this intently in his life, it’s like Rhys has never seen him before. And, well, okay.

“You didn’t know that,” Rhys says, not a question, not even close. It’s like someone saying, _That was an earthquake_ , because there’s just no mistaking some things. Gunshots and certain forces of nature. Heart attacks.

“I—” Vaughn starts, and cuts himself off with, “No,” because any kind of complex speech is out of the question, and he’s at least practiced that one.

“I thought you knew,” Rhys says, leaning away from him a little, eyes unfocusing. Mentally reviewing every interaction, Vaughn thinks. _Welcome to my head._

Fear of being left alone is a great motivator to learn your lessons. At some point, you have to stop trying to pull the wind your way and just turn the sails instead.

Rhys’ gaze snaps back to him. “You like guys.”

“I like you,” Vaughn says, and feels his face become a wildfire, because he’s five now, apparently. Weeks, he’s had weeks to think of the right words, and that’s what he goes with. “I mean, yeah, guys, I—I mean I’m not, like, experienced?”

“What does that matter?” Rhys asks, frowning like they’ve gone off the track again. Then he shakes it off and _beams_ and it’s unfair, it really is, Vaughn can only take one or five paradigm shifts at a time. “You just said you like me.”

He stares. Then he laughs, a short, hysterical kind of noise, a felled animal kind of noise. “Yeah,” he says, starting to smile, or possibly have a stroke. “And apparently you like me too, so we’ve really been messing up this whole—”

He comes clean off his feet when Rhys grabs him, arms around Vaughn’s middle, both of them staggering, because yeah Vaughn’s smaller, but he might actually be heavier than Rhys, mechanical parts aside.

“I’ve been trying to show you,” Rhys says, muffled into Vaughn’s shoulder, arms almost crushing him.

“I didn’t see it,” Vaughn says, choking up as soon as he speaks, laughing or crying or maybe collapsing on himself from the ribs outward. “Maybe we could have, y’know. With words?”

Rhys laughs, or sobs, it’s not clear. He sways Vaughn hard enough he almost loses his footing. They’re both about to end up on the floor, and he really doesn’t care.

“Wow, we suck at this,” Rhys says, laughing and crying, definitely both.

“We so do,” he says, hands tight in Rhys’ shirt.

He hears and feels Rhys take a huge breath, a close-to-drowning kind of breath as he pulls back, hands on Vaughn’s shoulders letting go so he can frame Vaughn’s face.

“You’re sure?” he asks, and Vaughn could kick him, but he gets it, down to the core he gets it.

“There’s no way I’d be this messed up otherwise,” he says, trying for light and getting lead, getting craters at his feet and Rhys blurring in front of him as he blinks. Rhys’ thumbs, one warm and one slightly cool, wipe away the wet from his cheeks.

“I was sure you didn’t want me,” Rhys says.

“Everyone wants you,” Vaughn says. “I’m just worse at it than they are.”

Rhys shakes his head. “I don’t care about—I _never_ cared about them. It was never them. The attention maybe, but not... not from the first time you came in. It’s just you.” He huffs out a breath that catches loudly and rips in half. “It’s been you for a long time now.”

“I hated it, wanting you,” Vaughn says, quickly while there are words in his throat, hearing, _It’s just you_ like an echo, like a oncoming flood down an empty corridor. “Wanting and not—not knowing _how_ to want it, knowing it was stupid, because you’d never—”

“I did,” Rhys says, voice going thick again, and Vaughn would reach up, return the favour, take the tears, since they’re his now, apparently. “I always did, I _promise_. You could’ve—Everything. _Anything_ , okay? You could have anything. Whatever you want.”

“You, then,” Vaughn says, eyes burning all over again. “I want you.”

Fuck, it _can’t_ be that easy. Too fast. Too unlikely. Too free of all the rubble he’s felt waiting to come down on him if he moved, trapped under this structure he’s spent so much time making. He still doesn’t have the language, but apparently you can invent your own.

Rhys laughs, smiling all watery, sunlight on a lake. “Already done,” he says. “You got me. What else?”

Vaughn thinks about it, really thinks, maybe for the first honest time. Finally stepping out of his own way. What does he want? Where does he go after the surrender?

“Come home with me?” he says. _Be home with me_ , he means. It feels the same right now.

Rhys steps up against him, arms tight around him, leans in, lips touching to the side of Vaughn’s mouth, both of them a total mess, tasting of salt water and neither of them breathing right and it’s perfect, absolutely perfect. The flaws are the best part. Vaughn would never have been brave enough to think up flaws.

“Yeah,” Rhys says, forehead pressing hard to Vaughn’s. He’s shaking, or Vaughn’s shaking, or there really is an earthquake. “Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

-|-

“Shit, shit ,wait,” Vaughn pants, as Rhys backs him into the wall by his dorm room door, or possibly against the door of the room next to his. Rhys bites down on Vaughn’s lower lip, leg pressed firmly between Vaughn’s.

“Been waiting,” Rhys says against his mouth, his cheek, hot breath and his tongue pressing at Vaughn’s. “Fucking sick of waiting.”

“I know,” he says, hands tight on Rhys’ back, “but I _didn’t_ know, and I—I just want – _fuck_ – I just want to be clear, I haven’t done, like, anything before. With someone else.”

Rhys drops his head makes a noise into Vaughn’s neck. “Vaughn. Fuck, _Vaughn_ , you can’t—don’t say things like that, or this isn’t gonna get past the hallway.”

Vaughn laughs, breathless, Rhys’ laugh tickling his throat, followed by Rhys’ tongue on the tendon there, his pulse point, up to the hinge of his jaw.

“Just so you don’t expect, like, fireworks,” Vaughn says weakly as Rhys’ teeth clamp down on his jaw.

Rhys pulls back, stares at him, and holy fuck. His right eye is all pupil, just black, which makes the ECHO eye look shockingly blue. He’s flushed and his mouth is wet and swollen, bruised-looking, and Vaughn’s messed up his hair. They’re _here_ and Rhys doesn’t care that he’s not—

“It’s perfect,” Rhys says fiercely, hands holding Vaughn against both him and the wall. “I swear one day I’ll—It’s all fireworks, okay? All of it. Everything you do.”

It’s impossible not to believe him, with that look on his face, with the grip he’s got on Vaughn’s waist, with the train track thump going on against his sternum. He makes a shaky, breathy noise, and Rhys makes a lower one, right from his throat.

“Do something,” Rhys tells him. “Before I can’t take it anymore. Unless you want me blow you out here. I would, honestly.”

He’s completely serious.

“Inside,” Vaughn says, and Rhys nods, both of them turning and fumbling for the door.

The door just about shuts before Rhys is grabbing him and dragging them together. Vaughn’s a little up on his toes and Rhys is leaning over him, neither of them exactly stable until the wall meets Vaughn’s back. Rhys’ hands run down his sides and push under the hem of his shirt, fingers spanning over his hips as he kisses Vaughn, bites at his lips and licks over the sting, no stillness in any of him, his whole body shaking everywhere Vaughn can feel.

Vaughn pushes his hips up against Rhys’ and they both groan, the already sloppy kiss unravelling. They’re still close enough to the door that Vaughn could reach out and put a hand on it.

“The bed,” he manages to say, but Rhys shakes his head, a small motion with his forehead leaning on Vaughn’s, his breath warm on Vaughn’s mouth. When he leans back he looks even more mussed than he did outside.

“I really, really want to blow you right here,” Rhys says, the sincerity on his face actually making it filthier, a sharp kick in Vaughn’s gut. His fingers trace over Vaughn’s ribs, down his chest, around to his back. “Please,” he says. _Asks._ Like Vaughn needs _convincing._

“Y-yeah,” he says, getting maybe half of the syllable out before Rhys is sliding – falling, _plummeting_ – to his knees, hands pushing Vaughn more against the wall, shoulders nudging Vaughn’s legs wider apart. Vaughn’s head drops back to the wall and his hand grabs at Rhys’ shoulder, his hair, contact for contact’s sake. The wall digs into the back of his skull and for some reason he remembers that post-it note, all the way back at the beginning.

“Thought about this,” Rhys murmurs, fingers fumbling at Vaughn’s pants. “Though about it so much, fuck.”

“Me too,” he says, good idea or not. Rhys makes a helpless sound and shoves Vaughn’s shirt up his chest again, fingers pressing at Vaughn’s skin, leaning up to kiss along the edge of Vaughn’s waistband, his stomach. Vaughn gets it together enough to drag his shirt over his head, almost losing his glasses, letting the fabric slip through his fingers and putting his hand back on Rhys’ neck, his cheek, carding through his hair.

Rhys rushes through getting his own shirt off, gets Vaughn’s pants open, pulling them roughly halfway down his thighs. Then he’s mouthing at the length of Vaughn’s dick through his underwear, his lips stretched and rubbing raw, tongue soaking through and his breath like steam, mouth set wide over the head as he sucks.

“Rhys,” Vaughn says, just to say it, and he gets Rhys’ mouth latched to the skin over his hipbone as he tugs Vaughn’s underwear down to join his pants, the tangle hobbling him at the knees. The cool air makes him shiver, tingles running up his back. Rhys bends his head down over Vaughn’s dick and then it’s all hot breath and the slow part of Rhys’ lips around him, a noise cracking in his throat.

There’s no patience in it. There’s no patience anywhere in the room. Rhys’ mouth slides down on him, his hands so tight on Vaughn’s hips he’s probably leaving bruises, a thought that makes Vaughn lock his knees so doesn’t buck forward into Rhys’ throat. Rhys’ cheeks go hollow, all tight, wet suction, and Vaughn grits his teeth against the shout trying to leap out of him. Rhys whimpers when Vaughn’s fingers spasm and pull sharply at his hair.

The pink staining Rhys’ cheeks goes down his neck and across his shoulders, spilling over onto his chest past what Vaughn can see, feeling the heat of it under his hands as Rhys’ tongue presses hard all up the underside of his dick, finds the slit and digs in.

Sweat itches down Vaughn’s back, rolls in beads from his temples. Rhys is letting out small, broken, desperate noises like he isn’t aware he’s doing it, eyes clamped shut and his hips twitching, swaying a little on his knees. He’s beautiful, spit on his chin, moisture spiking his eyelashes, obscene wet sounds filling the room every time he tries to take more, like he needs it, loves it, like this is really all he wants.

“Rhys,” Vaughn groans again, warning this time, little shivers rattling him, stomach clenching. “Rhys—”

He comes as Rhys sucks harder, takes him deeper, as a tear slips out the corner of Rhys’ eye, as he shoves Vaughn tight to the wall with a hand in the middle of Vaughn’s chest, another on his hip, anchoring him, not letting him do anything except watch Rhys take it, completely falling apart right into Rhys’ mouth. The hands on him and the wall against him are all that props him up as he bites down on his lip, broken words getting out anyway.

Rhys lets out a ragged breath as his lips slip over the head of Vaughn’s dick, staggering to his feet. He’s wrecked, mouth and chin shining wet, a long tear track going down to his jaw, blinking like he’s drugged. Vaughn’s hands scramble at him, pull him down into a kiss that hurts, all teeth and Rhys’ brand-hot mouth, the taste of himself on Rhys’ tongue.

“‘Kay,” Rhys says, and fuck, his voice is in tatters. “Now bed.”

They get there, somehow, Vaughn kicking what’s left of his clothes across the floor, Rhys down to his underwear by the time Vaughn pushes him onto the mattress. He gets between Rhys’ legs, hooks his fingers into Rhys’ waistband and watches Rhys shake as he strips him, dick curving up against his belly, flushed dark and leaking.

“What d’you want?” Vaughn asks, waiting while Rhys struggles for some control, running his hands over Rhys’ legs.

“You,” Rhys says, still sounding dazed.

“We’ve been over this,” Vaughn says with a little huff. He fits his palm over Rhys’ hip, turns his head and kisses Rhys’ knee.

Rhys bring his knees up more, catches Vaughn’s hand, brings it down until he’s guiding Vaughn’s fingers between the cheeks of his ass where he’s hot and pink and so vulnerable.

“Yeah,” Vaughn says, swallowing, feeling gut-punched, hollowed-out, lungs shoved carelessly to the side to make room. “Yeah, we can do that.” Rhys drops his head back onto the bed with a short, uneven noise, his chest rising and falling in quick gasps.

It doesn’t take him long to find the half-empty tube stuffed between the mattress and the bed frame, long enough for him to breathe but not enough that his hands have stopped shaking as he slicks his fingers, tries to warm the lube between them. Kneeling and bending low between Rhys’ legs, Rhys stretched out and almost delicate-looking in front of him, Vaughn rubs his thumb over the skin behind Rhys’ balls, finds his hole, slides a slow finger into him, first knuckle to second, and then third when Rhys keens and arches for it.

“Your hands,” is all Rhys says, a high whine, toes curling against the bed, Vaughn’s caught up in watching his finger sink into Rhys, tight fever-heat opening up for him. He runs a second finger around the edge of Rhys’ hole, pushes it in on a slow thrust when Rhys gives up a guttural noise and his hands skid over the sheets.

“You feel so good,” he tells Rhys, needing to say _something._ He’s more than half-hard again, but it’s nothing next to watching the way Rhys is responding, that live-wire reaction, and all for him.“You’re so good, Rhys.” He presses deeper, turns his fingers, making Rhys throw his head back.

“You do this to yourself?” Rhys asks, a low rumble of a question.

“Sometimes,” Vaughn says. “Not lately.” Because it led to imagining things that left him more depressed than anything else, he doesn’t say. “You can watch next time, if you want.”

Such a casual assumption of a next time, there. He almost feels brave.

Something like a laugh blended with a groan lodges in Rhys’ throat, cuts off as Vaughn curls his fingers. “Fuck yes,” Rhys sighs, at Vaughn’s idea or because of what Vaughn’s doing to him, he can’t really tell. Either works for him.

“Can you come from this?” he asks Rhys before he really decides to, watching Rhys greedily roll his hips down, trying to keep Vaughn’s fingers in him, trying to get them deeper.

“Not usually,” Rhys says, voice tight. His hands are clenched up in the sheets and there are veins standing out on the stretch of his neck, muscles in his jaw visibly twitching. He hasn’t moved to touch himself, but he’s leaking on his stomach, a slick-shiny little puddle near his navel, his dick tapping on his belly whenever Vaughn twists his fingers in the right way.

“You want me to...” he says, half-question, running two fingers of his other hand up the underside of Rhys’ dick, smearing precome around the head, partly just for the way it makes him shudder.

“No,” Rhys bites out, swallowing audibly as he looks at Vaughn. “Not ‘til you’re in me. Waited too long not to get it now.”

Whatever leftover blood Vaughn has divides itself between his face and his dick. “Rhys.”

“I’m ready,” Rhys tells him, blinking like he’s trying to keep his eyes open. He lets out another breathless laugh. “I’m so fucking beyond ready, seriously. C’mon. Please?”

“You don’t have to beg,” Vaughn tells him, stroking Rhys’ thigh now. He’s barely moving his fingers in and out of Rhys’ ass, just little nudges, not curling them too much in case it pushes Rhys over the edge.

“I will if you want me to,” Rhys says, hitting that bald honesty that gets to Vaughn even more than Rhys’ dorky way of playing it up.

“Not this time,” Vaughn tells him, slipping his fingers out, rubbing his other hand over Rhys’ thigh to quiet the noise of loss Rhys makes as Vaughn hurries unsteadily to find the condoms he’d shoved in the back of a drawer in the name of preparedness but never actually expected he’d need, much less in any kind of rush. At least he’s got a slightly better grip on his self-control by the time he kneels onto the mattress, the clattering pulse in his ears slowing to a steady drumbeat.

Rhys tugs him down by the arm until Vaughn’s lying over him, Rhys kissing up his neck, over his chin to his mouth.

“Like this, okay?” Rhys says, hands roving up and down Vaughn’s arms from shoulder to wrist. “I want you right here, like this.”

Vaughn swallows, a sudden pressure on something terrifyingly fragile in his chest. He nods, urges Rhys to bend a little more as he sits on his haunches, rolls the condom on and slicks himself, leaving another kiss on Rhys’ knee before he carefully grips the backs of Rhys’ thighs and lines up.

It’s impossible to look away from Rhys face, the slack, totally blown-open glaze of his eyes as he’s fucked. Rhys’ hands grasp at Vaughn’s back, squeeze his waist to try and get Vaughn to move, give him more, push in harder. Vaughn lowers himself down and kisses Rhys’ chest, over his tattoo where it dips below his collarbone.

“Easy, it’s okay,” he says, voice strangled while he rocks his hips slowly into Rhys, searing, perfect pressure around his dick making it hard to think, to not take Rhys’ insistence that he can handle too much too fast and run with it.

His voice breaks in his throat and he drops his forehead onto Rhys’ chest, Rhys’ hands holding him in place, his leverage cut down to just short, steady thrusts, feeling the catch in Rhys’ breathing with every one. Bracing himself on one hand, he gets his other one between them, wraps it around Rhys and jerks him off as closely to the rhythm they’re setting as he can, trembling too much to do more than tighten his fingers and angle his thumb so it catches against the head.

Rhys makes a frantic, sobbing noise and bows up against Vaughn, shoves his face into Vaughn’s neck and spills between them, hands on Vaughn’s shoulders, legs going tight around Vaughn’s waist and holding him still as Vaughn works him through it. He’s already coming by the time Rhys goes limp, dragging Vaughn down onto him, heat like tight bands around his ribs and his mouth open silently up against Rhys’ throat.

He doesn’t know how long they lie there before the wet spots and the mess cooling between them is enough to get them moving. He pulls Rhys up by the hand and they stumble their way into the bathroom, which is small enough when it’s empty and basically a matchbox with two people in it. With Rhys’ hands playing over his back as he turns on the shower, and Rhys ducking to kiss the side of his neck as steam fogs up his glasses, Vaughn doesn’t really care if they bump elbows getting clean.

“That’s okay in water?” he asks, nodding at Rhys’ arm, and Rhys gives him a flex like he’s showing off his bicep.

“This thing’s great in many situations,” Rhys says, waggling his eyebrows now, then shrugging. “So long as it’s not salt water, it’s fine. Unlike these,” he adds, reaching out and waiting for Vaughn to nod before he carefully takes Vaughn’s newly-opaque glasses off, folds them up and puts them on the edge of the sink.

Rhys cups his neck, thumb stroking under his jaw. “You can still kinda see, right?”

“No. Who are you again?” Vaughn asks, and Rhys laughs as he ducks and climbs into the shower in a way that speaks of long habit folding his limbs into a matching tiny cubicle.

They get sidetracked. Vaughn skims his hands over the muscles of Rhys’ chest, down his sides, cups his ass as they slide together, Rhys’ nose in his wet hair and Vaughn kissing along Rhys’ collarbones. He turns under the spray and Rhys fits himself to Vaughn’s back, half-hard against him, Vaughn tipping his head back and trusting Rhys to block the water. Both of them are more than a little pruned by the time they step out, the cooler air a shock after the steam. They get sidetracked again trying to dry off.

Rhys helps him strip the bed before they collapse back onto it, Vaughn on his back and Rhys folded over Vaughn’s side, head on his chest and his fingers idly drawing patterns on Vaughn’s skin, touching the hickey he’s left on Vaughn’s hip. They don’t say much, even if maybe they should, and Vaughn’s dozing when he hears a buzz and Rhys lets out a little snort.

“Dude, I just got a message from Fiona.”

Vaughn, instantly awake, groans just imagining it, and claps a hand over his face that Rhys gently removes with a tug on his wrist.

“What’s it say?” he asks with a sigh, and then he’s got Rhys leaning over him, holding his phone so Vaughn’s looking up into the screen.

_Hope all those pennies had a soft landing_ , it reads. _Your shift’s covered tonight, just don’t make it a habit. Say hi to Vaughn for me. F._

Yeah, he thinks. A very good big sister.

“What should I tell her?” Rhys asks, lying back, watching Vaughn. Waiting for Vaughn’s okay.

“Tell her,” Vaughn starts, swallows, lets his breath go and smiles. “Tell her the pennies are all fine.”

“They’d better be,” Rhys says, eyes dipping to Vaughn’s mouth for a second. “Since I’m dating an accountant.”

Vaughn quickly tries to shove him off the bed, Rhys squawking and grabbing onto him. There’s a struggle before both of them land laughing and winded on the far side of the bed, away from the edge again.

“If I go, I’m taking you with me,” Rhys says, poking Vaughn in the ribs, lying almost on top of him. He’s not too heavy, just heavy enough. He loops his pinky finger around Vaughn’s. “Floor pact.”

“Man, I worry about you sometimes,” he laughs, catching Rhys’ hand before he gets another jab in the side, bringing it flat against his chest before he lets go to comb his fingers through Rhys’ hair.

Rhys huffs. “Oh yeah?” He’s looking up at Vaughn, for a change. His fingers run along Vaughn’s shoulder. Vaughn’s hand rests on the nape of his neck. “I don’t.”

His fingers stroke down Rhys’ jaw, with Rhys’ cheek flat to his body like he’s listening for the stampede just underneath. Vaughn smiles, eyebrows raised. “What, never?”

Rhys shakes his head, cheek rubbing Vaughn’s chest, hair still a little damp and tickling Vaughn’s skin. “No,” he says. “Mostly I just worry about you.”

Vaughn swallows, half closing his eyes while Rhys’ fingers pass over the hollow of his throat. Rhys probably feels it when he swallows a second time. “Seriously?”

Rhys turns his face and presses a kiss against Vaughn’s chest, just below his sternum, humming. He props his chin up, bright-eyed. “I guess love is like that.”

He goes still, all those little movements hitching. A rush goes down his arms, into his fingers, everywhere, like a charge seeking the earth. He doesn’t get how Rhys can’t feel that, too.

“Is it?” he finally says, rough, blinking.

He knew this, he thinks. Just look behind him, add it up, claim the footprints and own the hunger. Admit he’s not where he was anymore. See the forest for the trees.

“Yeah,” Rhys says quietly, and Vaughn brings his thumb across Rhys’ cheek to the corner of his mouth where the smile is starting, like it might need some reinforcing. “It is.”

Vaughn clears his throat. “Okay,” he says, things settling all through him, stones shifting after the avalanche, becoming ground again, something you could stand on. “Yeah. That explains some things,” he says, and Rhys’ smile spreads past his thumb.

“Man, I still can’t believe you didn’t know I was into you,” Rhys sighs after a few silent minutes, shaking his head.

Vaughn scoffs. This is gonna be a _thing_ , he can tell. “Because you were such a great detective on your side of it?”

“I bought your drinks. I took you out for dessert,” Rhys says, nudging his shoulder. “We ditched our ride and everything.”

Point. “Okay, yeah, I know,” Vaughn sighs.

“And you brought me ice cream when I was sick,” Rhys says, like he’s just realised that. Yeah, sure Vaughn’s the only oblivious one here.

“I told you Fiona gave it to me,” he says. “Sasha sent me a summons,” he adds, and Rhys snorts.

“Ugh, of course she did. She knows too much.”

“Sasha mentioned a couple other things too,” he says, lightly. “Fiona too. And August did, actually.” He laughs when Rhys whines and shifts to grab a pillow and pull it over his head. “Did you really cry?” he asks, with probably too much glee, the relief of where they are making him giddy, the high of survival.

“I can never go back there,” Rhys says, muffled by the pillow. He pulls it away and stares at Vaughn, hair stuck up all over. “We’ll have to run away. Be outlaws. We’ll get new identities.”

“Who says I’m going?” Vaughn laughs. “It’s you they’re gonna make fun of.”

Rhys flops back. “Betrayed on all sides,” he says, hands crossed over his heart.

“Poor you,” Vaughn agrees, patting him.

Rhys raises his head and looks at him. “Vaughn, c’mon, I’m wounded over here. That means you should kiss me.”

“That’s some logic you’ve got going for you there,” Vaughn says, rolling onto his side, leaning over Rhys. “Not so sure I want to, now that you’re an outlaw and everything.”

“I knew it was the free drinks,” Rhys says, putting a hand on Vaughn’s chest and sliding it up, urging Vaughn down by the back of his neck. “Admit it, you’re weak for the Vodka Vaughn.”

He laughs against Rhys’ cheek, kisses the side of his mouth. “You’re just never gonna give up on that, are you?”

Rhys’ fingers go into his hair, hold him still for the next kiss, and the one after. Vaughn’s eyes are closed by the time he loses count.

“Nope, not ever,” Rhys sighs quietly, into Vaughn’s open mouth, their foreheads pressed together. “Just look where it got me.”

Vaughn thinks he should say something to that, but Rhys tilts his head and deepens the kiss, and he decides to just go with it.

-|-

They decide to skip walking into the bar together, both of them agreeing it gives the others just too much opportunity to prepare an ambush. So Rhys sends a group message inviting everyone out for pancakes, and they’re sitting at the table when Sasha shows up, tells them the others will be a little late thanks to something apparently involving August’s mom that Fiona insisted she could handle and that they’re clearly not supposed to ask about.

“I like the new look by the way, Vaughn,” she says, sliding over into the window end of the seat across from them and stealing Rhys’ coffee.

He frowns, trying to remember when he last changed his look and coming up blank, unless he counts giving up on wearing pocket protectors in high school, but that was mostly about self-preservation. “New look?”

She hums, watching him over the lip of the coffee mug. “It’s not the hair,” she says slowly, then leans forward and prods him in the neck. “Must be the great big sucker mark. Gotta watch out for those giant squid, Vaughn.”

He claps his hand on his neck almost involuntarily, face burning. He glares at Rhys, who’s maybe a little pink but totally unapologetic.

Sasha laughs. “Well, good for you guys. And good for me and Fiona, now that Rhys won’t be weeping on our couch anymore.” She finishes Rhys’ coffee and starts in on Vaughn’s. “I mean, I still don’t get it,” she shrugs, waving a hand at Rhys with a little smirk. “He’s like spaghetti. The same size from top to bottom.”

“Hey!” Rhys says, looking deeply wounded. Vaughn bites his lip to keep the laugh in.

“But if that’s what you like, I guess,” she says, looking at him, smirk turning a little more genuine, just that touch more fond.

“Yeah. It is,” he says, glancing at Rhys, and Rhys smiles at him.

“Ugh,” Sasha groans. “This is gonna be gross now, isn’t it? Grosser than it already was? Which I didn’t think was possible. Thankfully we have all that booze around so I can cleanse my brain.”

Rhys, who’s got his head in his hands now, peeks out at her from behind his fingers. “Are you done? Can we order?”

“Hey, so long as you’re paying,” Sasha says, and grabs a menu.

-|-

It’s funny how much things don’t change, after that.

Vaughn still goes to the bar, still watches Rhys dance and show off, and Rhys still flirts with anyone who’ll give him the time, with his eyes on Vaughn for every second he can manage. Vaughn is learning that that’s not exactly a change at all.

The way Rhys pushes up on the counter so he can lean over it and kiss Vaughn when he passes is, though. And Vaughn actually manages to pay for his own drinks. Occasionally.

He also gets to follow Rhys home and peel him out of the too-tight shirts and jeans and bite his way down Rhys’ chest, or turn him and bend him over the edge of the bed. He gets to grip Rhys’ wrists in his hands and ride him, Rhys whining and babbling while Vaughn takes his time. They get to spend the night in whichever of their tiny dorm beds was closest, Vaughn waking up pressed all along Rhys’ back with his arms around Rhys’ middle. And he gets to see the look on Rhys’ face when he wakes up and finds Vaughn next to him, imagines it’s the same as the one on his when Rhys wakes him.

-|-

Rhys coaxes him into going to a party using Vaughn’s agreeable nature while Rhys is blowing him as an underhanded tactic, and Vaughn feels pretty ambivalent until he’s got Rhys dancing up against him, Rhys looking down at him, lights playing off them overhead.

Somewhere, Fiona and Yvette are arguing again, like almost every other day since Yvette walked into the bar, talked her way into a free drink, and refused to buy Rhys’ act in a way that Vaughn still finds hilarious. She also shares Rhys’ fantasies of corporate stardom, with a much wider ruthless streak, which Vaughn finds more than a little terrifying. Somewhere else, Sasha and August have gathered a small crowd of onlookers, the possible explanations of which Vaughn just refuses to check up on.

“See? I told you it’d be fun,” Rhys says, leaning down to talk right into Vaughn’s ear, hands on Vaughn’s waist.

“I’m just glad you found matching shoes,” Vaughn tells him, and Rhys’ laugh goes off right by his cheek.

-|-

“So I was thinking,” Rhys says at the start of another semester, both of them on their sides facing each other in Rhys’ bed, still sweaty.

Vaughn kisses the hand Rhys is touching his cheek with. “Uh oh.”

“Hey.” A finger of Rhys’ other hand digs into his side. “I was thinking: we’ve both got a year left, maybe a little less.”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Vaughn says, wincing, but Rhys just carries on.

“And there are those student apartments on campus,” he says, and it takes Vaughn a second to connect that floating bit of information with anything else, the random dot on the chart. He does a good job of not bolting upright, which would probably have toppled him off the bed, and by the stipulations of the floor pact, would have ended with him dragging Rhys down too.

“Well,” he says slowly, as a way of controlling his breathing. “I’d want veto rights over the posters, at least in the bedroom.”

Rhys’ grin sends things flipping in Vaughn’s stomach.

“I’m gonna carry you over the threshold,” Rhys tells him.

“I’ve seen you pratfall and drop bottles way too many times to let you do anything even close to that,” Vaughn says, patting Rhys’ cheek at his crestfallen look. “You can hold my hand instead.”

Breathing control goes out the window the moment Rhys shoves him flat and straddles him, grin firmly back in place.

-|-

**_ EPILOGUE _ **

They’re moving around their tiny kitchen, Vaughn with his nose in his coffee mug, Rhys buttering toast, when Rhys tells Vaughn he got an internship offer from Hyperion, promises of more to come later, that first rung held out and waiting for him.

“There’s a new guy in charge over there,” Rhys tells him. “Really shook things up. They’re building a huge new station somewhere. Seems like a good time to get in on it.”

“That’s great,” Vaughn says, quickly and automatically replaying everything, rifling through it all for the thing he missed, the moment they might have decided it was just _for now_ , just _until_ , suddenly sure he should never have gotten so used to this, what was he even—

“You can pretty much write your own ticket, right?” Rhys asks, and Vaughn stops, looks at him.

“I... I guess,” he says. Then, “Yeah, I probably could.” There’s more that wants to follow, a lot more, but he bites his teeth down on it.

“Obviously I said I’d think about it. I wouldn’t go without you,” Rhys says, really staring now, starting to frown.

Maybe it was obvious. Maybe Vaughn’s just a little too good at ignoring what’s obvious, just because it’s unlikely. Hope isn’t the same as knowledge, even if they can look the same.

“Vaughn,” Rhys says, getting out of his chair, walking over, standing right in front of him. He puts his hands on Vaughn’s face, holding the eye contact. “Obviously, I wouldn’t.”

Vaughn swallows against the coffee aftertaste and thinks, _I don’t know how to do this._ Thinks, _I’m already doing this_. Thinks, _Maybe we can just keep being unlikely._

“You and me, huh?” he asks, like it’s no big deal. Mentally uncrossing wires, hauling things out of compartments he’s been trying not to look at. Always the same choice in the end: the glue or the pulling apart. Everything moves either closer or further away, depending on where you stand.

“You and me,” Rhys nods, smiling, a conspiracy that Vaughn’s in on, spies with a code. “We’ll work our way up. I swear, we’re gonna own that place.”

“Hyperion,” he says, thinking about it now, actually letting himself think about it. He knows some people. He’s good enough that they won’t say no, won’t wait around for him to ask someone else. And Rhys wants him to.

“Yeah,” he says. “Okay. I’ll put out some feelers, shouldn’t be too hard.”

Rhys’ smile is a slow thing, still building as he leans down. The kiss is slow too, gentle in a way that grabs Vaughn by the spine with both hands, gooseflesh running up his arms as he gets a hold of Rhys’ sides and pulls him in, pushes up onto his toes and into the kiss.

Vaughn’s coffee goes cold. Rhys makes him another one, smiling at him from across the counter.

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me [here](http://queerly-it-is.tumblr.com) on tumblr :D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Safe as anywhere [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7660354) by [Pod Person (hissykittin12)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hissykittin12/pseuds/Pod%20Person)




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